


Trotter Head

by Safiyabat



Series: Winchester and Sons - Teen Years Series [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Kid Fic, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 09:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Family Business finds itself knee-deep in Lancaster County, PA just before Christmas 1992.  Sam is 9, Dean 13.  </p><p>This is the first in a series of fics centered around entries in John Winchester's Journal.  The goal is to explore how those entries got into the journal in the first place and the relationship between the three Winchesters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: There are some descriptions of child abuse in this work. If this is triggering for you please don't read.
> 
> Supernatural and the characters from the show are not my property. I make no money from this or any other work of fan fiction.

Sam set his duffel bag down on the bed and looked around the motel room. The room was small – two twin beds, one dresser, a crap television and a bathroom. There was no table, no desk, no kind of place to set up and do homework really. No place to set out a dinner and eat as a family either. The décor was largely gray although it might have been beige or even off-white at some point. It had been generously enhanced by what was definitely a water stain on the ceiling and several unidentifiable stains on the walls. The stains didn’t tell him much about his father’s plans. They told him plenty about the cleanliness standards of the facility, and he was grateful to have gotten a lesson in how to rid bedding of lice and fleas several years ago. The lack of table or cooking facilities told him that they wouldn’t be sticking around. It wasn’t so much that their father cared if his sons did their homework or not. He was pretty sure that John Winchester had never actually looked at a report card and after the whole mess with Ms. Lyle – whatever that had even been – the man seemed almost affronted by good grades. And Dad wasn’t exactly a “family dinner” kind of guy. He was, however, cheap. Maybe it was ungenerous of Sam – it wasn’t like the guy had an actual paying job – but John Winchester didn’t spring for anything he didn’t have to and it cost a lot less to re-heat knock-off Spaghettios over a hot plate than it did to get fast-food every night. The fact that this place didn’t even offer that meant that if they were here for a full month Sam would cheerfully eat his own boots. Besides, while he didn’t give two farts about his kids’ grades there was no way he was going to be willing to try to do his own work on the bed for very long.

His brother and father entered behind him. “Don’t just stand there gaping, Sammy,” his father told him. “Look alive. There’s enough daylight for three miles from you and your brother at least. The fact that we just pulled into town doesn’t mean you get to slack off on your training. It’s not like a poltergeist is going to go easy on you because you’re the new kid.”

He looked at the books next to his bag. They’d stopped off to enroll in school and he’d gotten the books he’d need to get up to speed. He’d just have to get up early to deal with them. “Yes, sir.” He found his sweats in the duffel and went to change, but his brother pushed him out of the way.

“Uh-uh, short stuff,” Dean objected. “Make way for your betters.” His voice cracked a little, warbling between the alto of youth and the tenor he’d grow into. Dean was almost fourteen and this was normal. Sam had looked it up in the library back in Muncie. Boys started to grow, and things started to happen, and they talked funny and grew hair and turned into assholes for a while. The books had called it puberty. It would happen to him eventually, although he didn’t think he’d get to be nearly as tall as Dean. He’d always be the runt.

He let his brother change in the bathroom if that would make him happy. He debated turning his back to his father. On the one hand the guy was watching him change and that was just creepy, no matter who he was. On the other hand if the guy was going to be creepy wouldn’t it be better to keep him where he could see him? Not that he could do much against him, of course. John was a big guy and Sam was small for his age. Still, he had his .45. John had given it to him.

Once Dean had gotten himself dressed they were ready to go. Sam would have preferred to run alone. Dean was already more than a full foot taller than Sam. If he ran at a reasonable pace for him there was no way the nine-year-old could keep up. If they ran at a pace suitable for Sam then Dean wouldn’t get anything like a workout in, and that could get him killed. Then Sam would be responsible, just like he’d been responsible for getting their mom killed – their mom, and a lot of other people besides. He hadn’t known most of those people very well if at all. Dean was Dean. He didn’t think he could live with himself if anything happened to his brother, especially not if it happened because of him. “How about if we split up?” he suggested as soon as they were out of visual range of the motel. “You go north, I’ll go east. Or the other way around.” 

“Sammy, there’s no way I can get away with letting you go solo in a strange new place,” the blond frowned. “Who knows what’s around here? Come on, let’s just get it over with. It’s freezing here.” 

Of course it was freezing here. It was two weeks before Christmas and they were in the middle of Amish country. “So who needs to tell anyone? We meet back here and run back in together. This way we both get what we need.” The fact that his brother had not said that he didn’t want to let Sam go but that he couldn’t get away with letting Sam go was not lost on the child. “I’ll be fine, Dean. It’s broad daylight and I’ve got my stupid gun.”

“It’s not a stupid gun, Sammy. It’s a damn fine gun. I didn’t get my own gun until I was eleven, you know.” He looked back toward the motel. “You know what, though? You’re right. Kind of stupid to have us both trying to run at the same pace, isn’t it?” He ruffled Sam’s hair. He couldn’t help but smile at that. They weren’t a demonstrative family. “All right, but if you aren’t back here I’m coming after you.” 

“Sure thing, Dean.” He flashed his older brother a quick grin and got to running. Heading east might not have been the best plan, and it didn’t take Sam long to figure that out. After nine hours of sitting in the back of the Impala he ran for about three minutes before encountering his first hill, and around here it wasn’t as though they were gentle hills. Muncie had been relatively flat. Sam hated training, hated it with a passion. He was pretty sure that this was not normal. He didn’t have a lot of basis for comparison but he was pretty sure that there were not a lot of other nine year olds who were expected to do this kind of physical training on a daily basis. There was the running – well, he didn’t really mind the running, truth be told. The calisthenics were another story. The strength training just seemed wrong, and the sparring? Seriously? Half the time he let kids beat him up at school just so he wouldn’t kill them by accident. And while he never stayed in one place long enough to form attachments – Dad saw to that – he was pretty sure that he was usually the only nine year old carrying a concealed weapon to school. He really didn’t mind the running, though. He liked it. The repetitive motion cleared his mind and it was an okay way to get to see the new places where he found himself. 

Lancaster County was pretty enough once he got away from the hotel. It was rural, but he’d expected that. They’d been lured here because of cattle mutilations after all, and cattle mutilations didn’t exactly happen in urban centers. Unfortunately “rural” meant that there wasn’t much within walking distance of their motel; there was a diner, and a gas station, and a liquor store, and that was it. There was no library. There was no community center. There was no anything. Hopefully the school, wherever that wound up being, would have some kind of actual library. Otherwise it would be a long three weeks or however long Dad planned to stay here. Lancaster County might be pretty, but pretty didn’t cut it when your only company was a drill sergeant masquerading as a father and an overly hormonal older brother. Plus, Lancaster County kind of smelled like cow poop. 

He finished his run and met up with his brother at the designated spot. Dean had finished before him. Of course he had. They only needed to do three miles thanks to the lack of daylight, and Dean had longer legs. “Getting slow there Sammy,” the elder brother chuckled. “Chupacabra’s going to get you first, you’re the smallest and the slowest.”

“If that means I don’t have to keep hunting anymore that’s fine by me,” Sam muttered. 

“Don’t let Dad catch you saying stuff like that Sammy. He doesn’t know you don’t mean it.” The taller Winchester gave him a gentle push of the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s jog it in so he thinks we ran together.” 

Their father looked up when they entered the dingy little room. Sam didn’t think he was fooled by their show of unity but at least he didn’t say anything. “A hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups should be good for the night, boys,” he directed from his bed. He already had files spread out over the questionably-colored duvet. “Then we can talk about dinner.” Sam looked at the carpet and considered arguing. He thought about the distinctly agricultural perfume of the great outdoors and the markings on the floor that strongly indicated that few people bothered to take off their shoes after experiencing the great outdoors for themselves. Then he gave a mental shrug. Pushing back would not get him far, and his father just might make him go out and do push-ups and sit-ups in the source of the agricultural smell. He’d save the fight for something worth it. He dropped and started his push-ups.

“The carpet is totally gross, Dad,” Dean whined. “I swear it’s sticky.” 

“The faster you get finished the faster you can shower. And do you think a wendigo’s scraps will be any cleaner? You need to toughen up, Dean. You got soft in Muncie. You got too used to having things all pristine and clean.”

Sam finished his exercises in record time – anything to beat Dean to the bathroom. His brother’s showers were marathons lately. He had no idea what the guy was doing in there – how long did it take to scrub for crying out loud? There wasn’t likely to be much hot water left when he was done, though, so the youngest resident bolted for the shower as soon as he could. Because he loved his brother, though, he did wash himself as quickly as he could and left his brother as much hot water as possible. “Sneaky little bitch,” the blond groused as he shoved past, clearly not appreciative. Sam understood. He’d have been annoyed if he’d have gotten stuck with the second shower too.

While Dean was showering, though, Sam was left alone with his father. The adult didn’t really notice him so he crept forward and slowly, carefully stole one of the files his father had finished reading. John would probably never actually share details of any case with Sam – any details on what had happened with Ms. Lyle or Silas or that stupid skinwalker had come from sneakily reading his father's journal while he was gone. He certainly wouldn’t actually tell him about the case they were on, because he didn’t think Sam needed to know. So Sam helped himself.

It looked like all they had to go on were cattle mutilations. That was it. Of course, cattle mutilations could mean all sorts of things. There were all kinds of cryptids that fed on cattle. Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about hunting cryptids. Was it any different than hunting, say, a bear? If it wasn’t hurting actual people did they need to kill it? His father and his brother thought so. Pastor Jim wasn’t so sure.

There were other things that fed on cattle too, though. Vampires were supposed to be extinct. He’d read his father’s journal. If they were extinct why were guys like Daniel Elkins still going after them? And weren’t there other kinds of revenants that might want to eat them? Or fae? He was pretty sure that the fae were a thing, even if his father wasn’t. And those were things that his father would absolutely be keen to kill. He still wasn’t so sure. If they weren’t hurting humans, were they any different from humans who ate beef? 

But when most people heard about cattle mutilations their minds went to two places: aliens and Satanism, and aliens weren’t real. Satanism was real. That could mean all sorts of things. It could mean black magic and witchcraft, and that stuff was scary. It could mean demons. Dad hadn’t decided if he believed in demons or not. Pastor Jim had. Sam didn’t need to decide. He was pretty sure demons were real. If there were demons here, well, something had to be done, right?

Of course, why someone would think it was a great idea to bring a couple of young kids into a demonic hot zone was another matter entirely. But John Winchester wasn’t a typical parent. John Winchester didn’t have sons, he had soldiers. Dean didn’t mind being a soldier. He liked having orders, liked knowing where to go and what to do. He could trust Dad, and Dad could trust him. Dean was allowed to know things.

Sam had to find things for himself.

He wasn’t particularly expert on demonic lore, but what he was looking at didn’t seem to be particularly demonic at this point. It seemed to be sticking strictly to cattle. There was another pattern here too. As Dean’s shower stretched past the twenty-minute marker Sam noticed that while the initial mutilations had been spread out over multiple herds across the county the attacks very quickly became limited to larger operations. Without thinking he grabbed for more data, not noticing that his father had looked up from his work and was watching. The boy pulled out his notebook and began making notes. “Something interesting to you, Sammy?” John asked in a dangerous tone, just as the water turned off.

He bit his lip. “Er… maybe.”

“You want to share with the class?” 

No. No, Sam did not want to share with the class. Sam wanted to hide in the corner, thank you very much. “Um. Well, uh, yeah. I guess that, uh, well, after the first week or so none of the herds that got hit were from farms that also had horses,” he said, showing the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture data to his father. “At first yeah, everyone lost a cow or two but after that the mutilations were limited to places that only had cattle, not horses.”

His father blinked. “So?”

“So, Lancaster County is rural, but it’s really rural. Like the Amish capital of the country rural. And Amish people keep horses. It’s how they get around – wagons and buggies and stuff. So after the first week, Amish farms weren’t getting hit. Amish people recognized what was going on and knew how to protect themselves from whatever it was.”

Dean had opened the door to the bathroom. He looked a lot less tense. “Why do you know that, Sammy?” He shook his head. “Such a huge nerd.” 

John was quiet for a long moment. “That’s an interesting observation. What made you think to look at that?” “Well, I noticed that they were all on larger farms in the first place…” He trailed off. 

“If you’ve got time to check my work you’ve got time to study your Latin,” his father said after a moment. “After dinner. Come on. The all-you-can-eat buffet probably gets crowded.” Sam piled into the Impala, a book safely tucked into his jacket pocket. If there was such a thing as an all-you-can-eat buffet in the area then Dean’s mood was likely to be much improved, and there was likely to be salad in his future. Maybe Lancaster County had some redeeming characteristics after all.


	2. Chapter 2

How Dad managed to find a place to go target shooting so quickly amazed Sam. They’d only rolled in last night but here they were, deep in the boondocks somewhere with the guns and the bows and who knew what else. For shooting. They’d been up at the crack of dawn to do more running, and then sparring which meant that Sam had a nice set of bruises right down his ribs that ached mercilessly. He didn’t complain about them though. If he did he’d get stuck using the shotgun or the rifle or something with a significant kick. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t use those guns – he’d taken down a deer at seven, after all – but he was still pretty small. 

They shot their targets with the guns. Sam got the target every time with every gun, even when his father saw him favoring his right side and made him use the shotgun anyway. “You’ve got to learn to play through the pain, boy,” he’d said. Not that Dad noticed that he’d gotten the targets. He noticed his lack of enthusiasm, though. “Is this boring to you, Sammy?” he hissed, getting in his face.

“I didn’t say anything,” he objected. 

“That’s right, you didn’t,” the eldest Winchester replied. “You’re just going through the motions, aren’t you, Sammy?”

“I’m doing everything you asked, sir.”

“You’re not doing any more than that, though, are you Sammy?”

What more could he do? It was freezing out here. He could barely feel his finger on the trigger and he wished he couldn’t even feel that. What more could the old man want from him. “Yes, sir.”

“C’mon, Sammy, your little friends from Muncie would be jealous if they could see you right now,” Dean chided. “How many other third graders get to go shooting with their dads? Cheer up, we’re doing archery next.”

Sam hated archery. He hated it with the hate of a thousand burning suns. He was too small to pull the bow back right – it wasn’t like Dad was going to spring for a decent kids’ bow, not when Sam might someday grow or anything like that – and really, when would they be using bows when they couldn’t just use a freaking gun? They had consecrated rounds for every firearm they carried. Consecrated arrows? Not so much. He kept that inside, though. It wouldn’t do to share those thoughts. John Winchester didn’t like questions, especially not questions that challenged his authority. He silently strung the bow his father held out and followed orders, hitting his targets eventually. “Are you even trying, Sammy?” his father wanted to know.

“That bow is too big for him, Dad,” Dean pointed out. “He’ll be a fine shot once his body catches up a little.” 

John grunted. “He’d grow faster if he’d eat something. You never had a problem eating, Dean.”

“Sammy doesn’t like food, Dad.”

“Well he’d better learn. There’s no place in this war for weaklings. Weaklings get killed. Fifty pull-ups. Come on, get to it.” At least their father actually participated in the exercise this time. 

Lunch was another splendid affair at the all-you-can-eat buffet, which had proven to be a sad disappointment. Apparently even in Amish country vegetables were unheard-of, at least in the kinds of places that catered to people like his father and brother. He poked at canned corn with his fork and pulled out a book. His father and brother could talk about… whatever it was they talked about. He honestly didn’t pay much attention. It probably had something to do with hunting. Everything else did. Even his book ultimately related back to the great mission. At least it was interesting – a volume of Pennsylvania ghost stories that had wandered into his pocket the last time they’d stopped on their way here. His dad hadn’t asked and he hadn’t told. He’d probably have to abandon it or sell it or whatever at some point but between now and then it drowned out the babble and he wouldn’t get in trouble for reading it.

After lunch they went back to the motel. Sam was permitted to work on his actual schoolwork once he’d finished his Latin for the day. He shook his head. It wasn’t as if their dad was even Catholic. They’d never even been baptized. At least, he hadn’t been baptized. Had Dean? He couldn’t ask. Whatever. The point was, there was a huge great big wide terrifying world of evil out there. How much of it was really going to be stopped by Latin? Did ancient pre-Columbian spirits really care that the Bishop of Rome had once declared a mouthful of words to be effective in banishing them from a body? Or was it the exorcist’s belief that made the ritual work? In that case why couldn’t he just repeat the words in English? He made a note in his own notebook to ask Pastor Jim the next time he saw him. These were not the kinds of questions his father welcomed. They probably weren’t the kinds of questions his father could answer either, which might have had something to do with why they were so very unwelcome. 

Dean, of course, didn’t have to do much Latin study. He flipped on the television and watched college football. “I’m trying to study, Dean,” Sam objected. 

“Suck it up, bitch,” his brother retorted.

“You need to learn to focus despite distractions,” his father added. “A poltergeist isn’t going to be quiet so you can concentrate while you banish it, princess.”

“Don’t you have schoolwork you should be doing?” he prodded. 

“What for? I don’t need that crap. Algebra doesn’t help you dig graves, Sammy.”

“No, but it might help you find something else to do besides digging graves.” 

His father grabbed his arm, hard, and jerked him to his feet. “You listen to me, boy. There is nothing else. There is no other life. Not for you, do you understand me? You and your brother are hunters and that’s what you’re going to do.” He dropped him and Sam fell back onto the bed. “I’m going out. Don’t wait up.” He threw some cash onto the table and walked out the door.

Dean glared at him. “Great. Now you’ve pissed him off.” 

“It’s what I do best.”

“You don’t have to try so hard. Quit antagonizing him. You know this is what we do, Sammy.”

“Maybe it’s what you do. It’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to be a hunter, Dean. I want to live in a house, or a real apartment.”

Dean snorted. He hadn’t even moved his eyes from the television. “Well you can’t, all right? Don’t be stupid. Do your homework, geek boy.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d rather do homework than gank monsters. You are some kind of freak, you know that?”

Sam did his homework. The school here seemed to be a little behind his school in Muncie but that was okay; he could read ahead in most areas. When dinner time came he and Dean walked to the nearby diner. Sam left his book at home. This place was marginally better than the all-you-can-eat buffet but he could understand why Dad took them there. Dean could really pack the food away. Here they could barely afford the burger combo Dean ordered them to split. Sam insisted Dean take the burger. His brother tried to push back, but Sam insisted. He didn’t actually like burgers much and the ones here tasted like they’d been deep-fried in bacon grease. Their cash supplies were low, he knew. 

Sam was still awake when their father stumbled in that night, stinking of whiskey and dropping his keys. How he’d managed to get the Impala back to the motel Sam didn’t even want to know. He noticed the snow on the old man’s shoulders and head and got an idea. He woke up early the next morning and got dressed. His brother cracked a bleary eye at him. “Going somewhere, Sammy?” he whispered. 

“I’m going to go try to make us some money,” he replied. “I’ll be back.” 

He used the keys his father had dropped to get the snow shovel out of the Impala’s trunk. Then he took off for the side streets. He didn’t want to wake anyone up, but if he saw someone outside he felt perfectly justified in approaching. “Hi, ma’am,” he said to the first little old lady he saw getting a newspaper. “Can I shovel your driveway for you?” “I’ll give you ten dollars,” she replied, and he gave her a smile.

He knew he didn’t look it, but he was strong and he was very used to digging. By the time he was done with the first driveway a neighbor had seen him and he had another job lined up, and then another. By the time ten o’clock rolled around his net worth had increased by a hundred dollars, two cups of hot chocolate, a small bag of fresh homemade doughnuts and a slice of apple pie to bring back for Dean. 

He rushed back to the motel to find a livid and hung over father and a very sheepish brother. “Where the hell did you think you were going by yourself in a strange place?” his father roared, stepping toward him in his fury. 

He held out the doughnuts. “Breakfast, sir,” he said. He put the shovel in the corner and pulled out eighty of the hundred dollars he’d earned. “I saw that it had snowed and figured it was a good opportunity to make us a little money. You know, since I was awake anyway. Dean knew where I was going.” 

“You had no idea what could have been out there!” The adult stepped back, somewhat mollified at the sight of the cash and the food. He took a doughnut. 

“Consecrated rounds in the .45, sir,” he replied. “And a flask of holy water just to be safe.”

John couldn’t say much after that, so he didn’t. “There’s too much snow to do any outdoor training today, and I’m guessing you got a decent upper-body workout at least,” he said grudgingly. “I want all of the weapons cleaned and maintained today – knives sharpened, guns stripped. You know the drill. Dean, you go get them from the car.”

His brother snapped to. He probably would have complained but Sam had no illusions as to how furious John had been when he’d seen Sam was missing. He’d have known better than to argue. “Thanks for the pie, Sammy,” he whispered when he came back inside as the boy indulged in a doughnut.

John didn’t linger. Where he went or what he did Sam didn’t know or care. Maybe it had something to do with the case. Either way, the tension in the room lessened considerably with the number of occupants. “You made eighty bucks shoveling? Good job, Sammy,” Dean praised.

“Actually I made a hundred,” he informed.

“Why’d you lie to Dad?”

“Remember that time in Montana when Dad said he’d be gone for three days and he was gone for like a week because he was hurt, and we ran out of money and you almost got caught stealing food from the convenience store?” His brother nodded. “Well, I figured that if we had an emergency fund – one that just the two of us knew about, that we only touched if we really absolutely had to – it wouldn’t be the end of the world when that happened. You know, if Dad stayed away a little longer than he planned or something.”

Green eyes looked away for a moment. “Huh. Smart.” They snapped back. “But we can’t keep secrets from Dad, Sammy. He’s Dad.”

“Remember that time he spent our last twenty dollars on rum?” 

“He gets sad sometimes, especially in November. It’s not his fault.”

Sam wasn’t going to get into the subject of fault with his brother, not as it related to their father. He wasn’t interested in a fight. “That’s not the point, Dean. The point is that we’re doing him a favor by being more self-sufficient.” 

That did the trick. “Good thinking, Sammy. You want knives or guns?”

“Knives.” Sam had always preferred blades. Guns were safer of course – if you were going to kill something at a distance there was much less of a chance that it would kill you, or Dean. There was still something much more personal about a knife. Knives didn’t jam. He grabbed a sharpener and a cloth and got to work.

After they finished with the weapons they put them away, and then they had their liberty. Sam packed for school and laid out his clothes for tomorrow. By the time their father came back to bring them back to the buffet place he was peacefully studying Latin. Dean was watching football again. John inspected their work and pronounced it to be acceptable before they left.

The bus appeared to bring them to school the next day. They boarded at the mouth of one of the side streets. Thankfully they were at the beginning of the route, which meant that they could take a seat in the back near the emergency exit and not have to get stared at. Being the new kid all the time was challenging. Being the new kid all the time was extra challenging when you were the runt. Being the new kid and the runt when your clothes were hand-me-downs from someone who couldn’t afford to be careful with them because he was getting chased by monsters all the time and oh yeah, they were cheap in the first place – that drew attention and not the good kind. Fortune smiled on him again as he got settled into his class. More than half the class was Amish – the kids stood out. The teacher, a Ms. Weir, took one look at the runty kid in the patched and threadbare clothes and let him just take his assigned seat instead of making him stand up in front of the entire class and talk about himself. There was a vocabulary quiz, which she told him she wasn’t going to grade for him. She just wanted to see where he stood. He almost laughed. 

The other kids in his class weren’t friendly or unfriendly. They were okay. He sat by himself at lunch – third grade dining separately from eighth – and poked at the school lunch until someone sat across from him. “I thought all English kids liked pizza.” 

“George, right?” Sam remembered. Sam had taken a test for reading on Friday when they’d enrolled and placed outside of any of the established reading groups. He’d still been in the room though and had to listen as the other kids read aloud. 

George smiled, pleased to have been remembered. “That’s right. So do you not like pizza?” George was one of the Amish kids. Blond hair, blue eyes, black trousers, blue shirt. The shirt actually matched his eyes.

He pointed. “That,” he informed, “is not pizza. I don’t know what they’re telling you Amish kids about us but that is not pizza. And those?” He pointed at the gray cut beans. “Those are not green beans. They’re a crime against Nature.” 

The other boy laughed. “You’re not wrong,” he agreed. “How come your mother doesn’t send you with a real lunch like ours, then?” 

“My mother’s dead,” he replied. “It’s just me, my dad and my brother. Neither of them is big on cooking.”

“Here, take one of my sandwiches, Sam,” George told him. “My mother always sends me with two, I don’t know why.” 

“I can’t take your food away from you, man!” Sam objected. “You’ll be hungry!”

“Hardly,” the blond replied. “There’s pie in here, and cookies… I won’t go hungry, believe me. So what brings you to Lancaster County this time of year, anyway?” 

He shrugged. George seemed like a nice enough guy, but nice didn’t necessarily mean he was up for the truth. “My dad got a job around here. I’m not sure where.”

“Maybe he’s hired on as a farm hand somewhere? It’s mostly farm work around here.” 

Sam tried to think of his father doing farm work of any kind. “Maybe. I think he’s more of a mechanic type. I guess your folks own a farm or something though?”

“Yeah. We lost one cow when the cattle thing started, but only one. My folks knew what to do and we haven’t had a problem since.” He nodded sagely.

“How did they know what to do?” Sam took a bite of the sandwich. It was the best ham and cheese sandwich he’d ever tasted. Bread like that should be illegal. Maybe there was something supernatural about the dough?

“I think it’s happened before, maybe. The elders knew, they must have told them or something.” He shrugged. “Our elders know how to keep us safe. It’s a good sandwich, huh?”

“The best!”

“My mom’s probably the best cook in Lancaster County. Not to be boastful or anything,” he added with a worried lift of his eyebrows. “She’s just.. you know…”

Technically Sam did not know, but he knew the right noises to make. “Yeah, man. I get it. Hey, what can you tell me about this school? Who should I watch out for?”

George, predictably, was just thrilled to be treated as an expert. He spent the rest of the lunch period warning his new protégé about the perils of the Franklin School. Some things were not exactly news to the Winchester. He did not need George to tell him, for example, that sixth graders were to be avoided at all costs or that the phys ed teacher was quite possibly the devil incarnate. Knowing that Ms. Weir was terrified of horses, on the other hand, was certainly worthwhile. Knowing that the divide between the sexes had not been breached in the third grade here, that was another piece of useful information. Back in Muncie girls and boys played together as a matter of course. Here it would draw attention if he were to show any friendliness toward a girl, and a girl showing friendliness toward him was probably a prelude to a cruel prank. 

He made some other new friends at recess thanks to George’s intervention, all Amish kids like George. The other non-Amish kids – “English” kids, the Amish kids called them – looked at him funny for it, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he was going to be sticking around. The boys were friendly enough and while they didn’t quite treat him like one of them he was an outsider wherever he went. He didn’t expect to be “one of the guys.” When the time came to leave he had three new books checked out from the library and had met George’s father, who had come to pick his three children up in a horse and buggy. The horse was beautiful and looked at Sam with these big understanding eyes that seemed to just get everything he’d ever thought. It lowered its head and he scratched its nose. George’s father’s face softened a little, and George made the introduction. “If you like horses so much, Samuel, why not come by and do some work on the farm? I can pay you,” he offered. 

“I… uh, sure, sir. If my dad says it’s okay, that would be fantastic.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, Samuel.” Mr. Schmidt smiled again. 

Sam ran to catch up to Dean and board the bus back to the motel. “So what did you think of the new school?” he asked his brother as they settled into their seats. The bus lurched into motion; they had plenty of time to go.

“It was all right I guess. It was a school. One’s pretty much the same as any other, am I right?” He shrugged. “The girls are prettier here than they were in Muncie, but there’s twice as much homework.” 

“You actually going to do any of it?” 

“Maybe. Probably not though. What about you, short stuff? Looks like you and that horse were getting up close and personal.”

“Shut up, jerk.”

“Make me, bitch.” Sam punched him in the arm. “Hey, I guess all that shoveling yesterday did you some good. That might actually leave a mark. I don’t know. I don’t like the gym teacher, I don’t see the point in art class and I fell asleep halfway through math class.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Dean, you know you could probably teach that math class if you put your mind to it, right?”

“Why would I want to? Would it put a rawhead down? I was thinking about what you said, though. About the emergency fund. I’m going to try to get a job while we’re here, earn a little money to set aside. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but every little bit helps, you know?”

Sam nodded. “Do you have a line on a job?” “Yeah, maybe. Wanda Shanks, her mom owns the diner near the motel. She says that they need help with the dishes but can’t afford someone full time. I figure if I work under the table and stuff I can probably do it. I told her to tell them I’d come by and talk to them after school.”

“George’s dad offered me a job,” he blurted. “On the farm.”

“Sammy, you’re nine. You can’t get a job.”

“I can so. If it helps out the family why shouldn’t I work?” He shrugged. “Besides, you know dad will be all caught up in this job. He won’t even notice I’m not around.”

“He’ll notice,” Dean lied. “He’s just, you know, Dad.” Sam did know. He knew very well.

When they got back to the room he let Dean get a cleaner, nicer shirt to go across to the diner. “There’s another reason I want to go to the farm, Dean,” he explained.

“What’s that?” 

“Well, the other day I noticed that the cattle mutilations all stopped in places where there were horses, and that it was a short step to figure out that all of the Amish farms have horses on them…”

“Yeah, and?”

“Well, George said that their community had figured out how to make the mutilations stop. So that must mean that someone knows what it is, right? And if I can figure out some clues, maybe you can pass those clues on to Dad?” He bit his lip.

“Sammy,” Dean said after a minute. “You can tell Dad anything you find out just as easily as I can.” 

“No, I can’t. Dad doesn’t listen to me, and you know it. I could tell him that the sky was blue and he’d give me extra push-ups for not waiting for him to figure out that it was green.”

“Sammy, don’t, okay? Just don’t. He’s our dad, he knows best and we have to trust him. Okay?”

“You trust him, Dean. That’ll be enough for both of us.”


	3. Chapter 3

As it turned out Sam didn’t actually tell his father about his job. His dad didn’t come back to the motel until eleven o’clock that night, although he did call the room to let them know that it was okay for them to go across the street to get dinner. He had forgotten to leave them any cash but they didn’t tell him that; Sam’s emergency fund would cover what they needed and they both had jobs to cover more. Heck, this time they could go across the street and both get meals. 

After dinner they went back to their room. Sam had already gotten his homework done so he focused on Latin and on doing Dean’s homework. Dean did some of his own homework and watched Monday Night Football. Their father made it back not at eleven but by twelve thirty. Dean was asleep. Sam was not. “Hey, Sir,” Dean greeted, sitting up as the lights flickered on. “How was your day?”

“Shitty.” The booze on the old man could be smelled all the way at the bed, booze and cigarettes. He’d been at a bar. A cheap bar by the smell of it – the booze had the odd combination of beer well past its peak freshness and liquor that could double as paint thinner. “I tried to go to some of the affected farms. The bigger farms that had the fresher mutilations were all cooperative but they didn’t know nothin’. The smaller farms, the ones with the Amish people on them – well, they weren’t saying anything. Wouldn’t even let me on the property. Those people knew their rights all right, let me tell you.” He shook his head. “What the Hell?” He looked over at Sam. “Get to sleep, kid. Just because I stayed out late doesn’t mean you get out of early morning training tomorrow.” 

Sam closed his eyes. He should have known better than to let his father know he was awake. Sleep did come eventually, and with it nightmares. He dreamed of cattle, and of blood, and of old people and children in a pile with the mutilated cattle. When his brother shook him awake at five he had bitten his lip bloody to keep from crying out. Well, at least he hadn’t woken anyone else. 

They warmed up, ran and sparred for a while and Sam actually managed to take Dean down a couple of times. Of course, Dean took him down more than that. “You’ve got to be faster, Sammy,” his father sighed through his hangover. “You think a wendigo is going to go easy on you because you’re smaller?”

School was more of the same. He actually had friends to sit with at lunch. The “English” kids were okay but George and his Amish friends were friendlier. He guessed if he was going to be the outsider he was going to go all the way. The class work was easy enough. Phys ed was a joke, although he had to hide the bruises from sparring from everyone in the locker room. That was okay; it wasn’t like it was the first time. After school he went home with George to work on the farm; he found out that George’s dad had worked out a schedule with Ms. Weir to drive Sam home after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was a little humiliating but whatever. He’d stay at the farm until seven those days, and pick up five to six hours on Saturday afternoons as well if his father would allow. He knew Saturday mornings were usually devoted to shooting but he was pretty sure he could make it work. 

The work, of course, was crap. Literally. The Schmidts’ primary business was dairy farming and they had a good-sized herd for such a family. George was the only boy, and part of the reason they were willing to accept Sam’s help was that it would free some of their daughters up for indoor work. Sam didn’t really mind. He was used to the cold and he frankly ran hot as a general rule. The filth of the barn – well, that was another matter, but he could almost hear his father’s voice in his head. “You wouldn’t expect a ghost not to throw you into a cesspit just because of your delicate sensibilities, princess.” There was a lot of shoveling to be done, a good four hours of it. He’d managed to avoid getting anything on his clothes when Ms. Weir showed up to pick him up, though, and Mrs. Schmidt made sure he went home with two sandwiches and some pie as well as the four fives Mr. Schmidt pressed into his hands.

Sam learned a lot in those first four hours of employment. He learned that once you got into a rhythm mucking out stalls wasn’t really as bad as it seemed. He learned that the manure got composted for fertilizer in the spring, and that a wheelbarrow full of cow dung weighed more than he did. He learned that it didn’t matter what kind of shape he was in, there were muscles that he hadn’t used yet and he was using them all tonight. He learned that cows could actually be kind of affectionate. He learned that the Amish spoke a dialect of German amongst themselves. He’d learned some German a while ago, when they’d been in Chicago and the neighbor lady had wanted him to learn. He remembered some and he was able to pick out a few words here and there, although it was difficult. Asking, though - polite inquiry got a positive reception and gentle encouragement.

He learned that in every barn and outbuilding he saw he found the same legend, hand-written and framed. He couldn’t read it, not yet. He didn’t feel comfortable asking about it yet either. He wasn’t in good enough with these people. He did, however, notice that the frame was new – that there was a lot less dust on the frame than on other items hanging on the wall, that the ink was not at all faded. He didn’t think it was at all coincidental. 

His teacher’s eyebrows drew together as they pulled into the motel parking lot. “Is this where you’re living, Sam?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “Only temporarily, though. My father won’t have us living in a motel room for more than a couple weeks, I’m sure.” That much at least was true. They’d be in a different motel room in a couple of weeks, once this hunt was finished. “Once he finds us a real place to live, he’ll move us as soon as possible.”

She nodded. “I hope so.”

“I know so, ma’am. He’s not going to want to have to share a bathroom with my brother for longer than he has to.”

She faked a grin. “Is your brother older?”

“He’ll be fourteen next month, ma’am.”

She wasn’t faking the chuckle she only half-restrained. Right, then. One of those “puberty” things. “Right. Well, I’m sure he’ll grow out of it. Have a good night, Sam. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, ma’am.” He didn’t invite her inside. He could see the Impala outside the door to the room. He couldn’t see the state his father was in, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to. She didn’t seem to expect to be invited in either.

He made his way inside, finding his father and his brother seated on their respective beds. His father had a beer. His brother had a burger and fries in a Styrofoam container. “Nice of you to finally join us,” the elder Winchester greeted. Sober, Sam judged, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. “Where have you been? You should have been home hours ago.” 

“Working,” he replied, handing over fifteen of his twenty dollars. His father raised an eyebrow in warning. “Working, Sir.”

“That’s better. Who the hell told you that was okay?”

“I thought it would be good to earn some money, replenish our cash reserves. Sir,” he added quickly. “We aren’t likely to be staying around long, and George’s father offered me a job.”

“Did you even test them?” his father sneered.

“They didn’t react to ‘Christo,” he informed. “It’s just two nights a week, and Saturday afternoons. I made sure to keep Saturday mornings open because you like target practice.”

Well, that was the wrong thing to say. “Oh, we’re doing target practice because I like it, Sammy? Is that it? Do you think we do target practice on Saturday mornings because I’m bonding with you somehow?”

“No, sir. I’d never make that mistake sir.”

His father’s backhand wasn’t entirely unexpected but it still sent him staggering into the wall. Dean sat up, hand pressed to his mouth and eyes widened. “We do target practice on Saturday so you’re ready,” the adult hissed. “Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that it’s for any other reason. You need target practice so that you can play your part in taking on the thing that killed your mother. Or do you think you’re too good for that? Is that it, Sammy? Do you think you’re above getting revenge for the woman who gave you life?” His father’s eyes glowed like coals as he advanced on the boy.

“No sir.”

A strong hand grabbed his arm and jerked him to the ground. “Make sure he does a hundred push-ups before he touches his homework or that food,” John Winchester snarled. “That’s for mouthing off. I’m going out.”

Sam took off his coat and started his punishment exercises as his parent stormed out of the door. It wasn’t fun – he was already aching from the toil of the farm – but he knew his brother would follow their father’s orders to the letter. By the time he finished his arms were a quivering mess. “What did you have to go and do that for?” Dean groused. 

“Do what?” he said after washing his hands until they were pink and grabbing his the dinner Mrs. Schmidt had sent him with off the table. “There’s some pie for you.”

“Mouth off like that. Now he’s going to just go to a bar and drink himself into oblivion.” 

“It’s better than having him here drinking himself into oblivion.” He’d have shrugged his shoulders but he wasn’t sure they’d move that way. “You’d already told him I had a job, hadn’t you?”

“Yeah. He was here when I got home to change, wanted to know why you weren’t with me after school. I wouldn’t say he was thrilled, Sammy. He likes to know where you are all the time.”

Sure. That was why he was always around so much. He knew he couldn’t say that kind of thing to Dean, though. It would just make him mad. He could deal with his father being mad. Dean was another matter entirely. “So did you start at the diner?”

“Yeah. They’re only willing to let me work four hours a day, though. Something about not wanting to affect my schoolwork.” He scoffed. “If only they knew.”

“They’re paying you under the table, right?” 

“Yeah, every day.”

“Did you keep back part of it for our slush fund?”

“’Slush fund?’ What is this, Wall Street?” He shook his head. “Yeah, yeah. I did.” He held out five bucks. Sam put it in the envelope with his own reserve and added it to their hoard. “How was your job?” 

“Not bad. I mean, it was dirty. Don’t get me wrong. But cows are nice, you know? Quiet. You don’t want to go out and shoot archery? They don’t care. As long as their shed gets shoveled.”

“It’s the only thing that matters, Sammy.”

He sighed. “So everyone keeps telling me.” He took a bite of his sandwich and once again said a brief prayer of thanks for the wonder that was Mrs. Schmidt. “How was the diner?” 

“Soggy. I washed a lot of dishes. But hey – a job is a job, right? And we’re doing what we need to do for our family, for Dad. Speaking of which...” The blond grabbed a piece of the pie. “Wow. You know, I wonder if those puppy-dog eyes count as a superpower.”

“Yeah, sure. I’m gonna go to Professor Xavier’s School for Special Children and leave you all behind.” Chewing hurt, probably thanks to the bruise his father had left him with. Whatever. The sandwich was worth every ache, and the best part was the fact that there were two of them.

“Even Cyclops had to do target practice, geek boy.” 

“Whatever. So how was school?”

“You know. The usual. I sat next to Miranda Richards in health class today. I wonder if she’s padding her bra.”

“Dude, seriously?”

“What? It’s a legitimate line of speculation. Don’t go giving me one of your bitchfaces. You’re going to start noticing girls soon enough and then believe you me, you’ll be curious about that too.” He gave a slick grin. “I’m going to see if I can find out for myself on Friday night after work. I got her to agree to go see ‘The Bodyguard.’”

“I thought you hated chick flicks, Dean.” 

“If I’m with a chick it’s okay. Dad already said he’d drop us off and stuff.”

Great. That would mean an entire night alone with their father. He could think of few things in the world he wanted less. “Okay. Well, I didn’t find out much at the farm today, but I have a few ideas about what to look into. Did Dad say anything about the case while I was gone?” 

“You know, if you showed a little interest in hunting when he was, you know, around he might like you better.”

“I’m not interested in hunting. I’m interested in you not getting killed, and in him not getting killed so we don’t get sent to social services and separated. Here, pass me your homework.” 

“You could fake it.”

“He’d think I was possessed. I’m not you, Dean. Nothing less than you is going to make him happy. I’ve read his journal, remember? I’ve disappointed him since I was two. If my ‘killer instinct’ was lacking then, it’s not going to impress him now. Especially when he compares it with yours. So I’m not going to sit there and waste my time and energy trying to pretend to be you, because I’m not you. Okay?” 

“Jeez, Sammy. I’m just trying to help.” Dean got up and went to sit on Dad’s bed. 

Well, that was fine. If Dean didn’t want Sam to do his homework for him he’d do his own reading. He grabbed one of the books he’d taken out from the school library – a book on the folk traditions of Pennsylvania Dutch country. He ate both sandwiches and the rest of the pie, becoming thoroughly immersed in the work. This had very little to do with the case, books with details about cattle mutilations rarely being found in elementary or middle school libraries. It was just something Sam liked to do when he got to a new place. Other kids learned these things from their families. He remembered this one girl in this one town in upstate New York, her father’s family had been in the area since the seventeenth century or something like that. The guy knew a little something about every little tree or piece of dirt he walked past and he talked about it like it wasn’t even a thing, like it wasn’t even a big deal that he knew about it. At least Minerva had been appreciative of it, had valued that about her father. He’d been willing to take Sam with them on Saturday hikes while they’d been there, and had even played guide for Sam’s dad a couple of times.

Sam himself was rootless. He knew he’d been born somewhere. The six months he’d spent in Lawrence had been his longest tenure anywhere ever, but he envied that. Maybe he would never have that kind of intimate knowledge of a place that came from centuries of data, passed down from parent to child with loving care. He could cram his brain full of what information was available to the public though. Maybe it would be useful someday and if not he could at least pretend that he had a place somewhere.

Dean didn’t understand, but he didn’t want to understand. He was happy hunting with Dad. He was happy being Dad’s little soldier. He didn’t care that it was likely to get him killed before he even graduated high school. Sam was no expert on families, but he was pretty sure that other families didn’t work that way. Other parents didn’t usually seem to value the lives of other people over their own children, or the dead over the living. 

He showered and tried to sleep. He even dozed off after a while. He woke up when his father came home at two thirty, probably far too drunk to even remotely have been allowed behind the wheel. Sam didn’t let him know he’d woken up, and John didn’t actually check. Their father snored right through their Wednesday alarm, but Dean made him get up and go running with him anyway. No one at school said anything about the bruises. His lunch buddies greeted him in their weird dialect, though, so apparently they’d heard from George that he was learning. That was fine. It gave him something new to learn, a new challenge. It wasn’t like the actual schoolwork was all that challenging. Dean went to work at the diner, turning most of his wages over to Dad and smuggling the rest to Sam at the end of the night. Dad was actually home when Sam got home from school; he set his youngest son to extra running and knife practice to make up for his “slacking” the day before.

On Thursday he went back for more shoveling. The work seemed to go faster this time, maybe because his muscles knew better what to do now. Maybe it was because he was less hesitant around the cows. He actually had the time to learn to milk them, which managed to be both completely awkward and completely weird at the same time. He missed the gentle smiles of his instructor and the older girls who were also milking as he couldn’t help but laugh with delight.

Friday came around and of course Dean had his date after work. Dad disappeared with Dean, leaving Sam in the hotel room with take-out from the same diner and instructions not to even think of setting foot outside the room or picking up the phone. Who exactly did Dad think he was going to call, anyway? All of his friends were freaking Amish. 

Dad and Dean got home around midnight. His brother’s lips were maybe a little swollen and there was a gleam in his eye that hadn’t been there when he’d left the motel. Dad shook his head in an affectation of disapproval but his eyes gleamed with pride. “So, Dean, can you tell me about the movie?” the younger brother smirked. His father would never look at him that way.

“There was a movie?” the teen squawked.

“Yeah, with that singer in it. How about the major plot points?” 

“B-cups, Sammy. B-cups.”

“Gross, Dean.” 

They went to bed and their father generously let them sleep in until all of six o’clock the next day before ripping the covers off by way of rousing them. Dean yelled and ran for the bathroom. “Time for shooting practice boys,” John Winchester growled, miffed at missing out on using the only toilet in the place.

Target practice was exactly what he expected it to be – dull, loud and unpleasant. He brought Dean’s math homework and did it while his father worked on Dean’s precision, not picking up a gun until his father noticed his silence and complained. His father dropped him off at the Schmidts’ farm after practice and vowed to return at six, giving Sam a good six hours to earn cash. Fortunately there was six hours’ work to be done, all that and more. There was shoveling, of course. On a farm like this there was always shoveling to be done. There was cow-shoveling and there was horse-shoveling, and that was a whole different ball game. Horses weren’t quite as placid as cows. They could be mischievous indeed if not downright evil, and he did find it necessary to check to see if one or two of them were possessed. His employer told him they seemed to respond well to him, though, and that was good. He got to help with the milking again, which he liked. 

It was halfway through the day, when he and George and Mr. Schmidt were taking a break for hot cider, when he got up the courage to ask about the framed words in all of the rooms. Mr. Schmidt just smiled at him. “It’s just an old tradition, Samuel,” he replied. “Every so often when bad things start to happen in a community they get attributed to Trotter Head. The words are a charm to keep Trotter Head away from the herds and the children and the elders.” He stood up. “It’s simple stuff really. Are you ready to get back to work?” Sam nodded, because he was. He committed his boss’ words to memory and picked up his shovel. 

That night his father picked him up at six. He didn’t even come up the driveway, probably because he didn’t want to tip Mr. Schmidt off to the fact that he wasn’t a real Department of Agriculture agent or whatever he was pretending to be this week. That suited Sam just fine. He said goodbye to his friends and rode back to the motel. The first ten minutes of the car ride were silent. “You like working on the farm, Sammy?” his father asked him after a while. 

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s awfully… dirty. I know you’re kind of prissy about dirt.”

“I’m careful, sir.” Dean was the conquering hero, in love with the hunt and with guns and going out on dates with girls. Sam was the one who was prissy about dirt. Great. Did Mr. Schmidt compare his kids to each other like this? 

“Yeah. You are. I mean, your clothes don’t seem any dirtier than normal.”

“No, sir.” And that was their whole conversation.

Sam washed up for a good ten minutes when they got back to the hotel, grabbed one of the local-folklore books and their father dragged them to the all-you-can-eat buffet again. The smell of overcooked cabbage products and fried food contrasted sharply and not favorably with the scent of the barns, and the din of harried families and cranky infants made him long for the gentle lowing of cattle and soft tones spoken in a half-understood language. Fortunately he had his book. He’d initially intended to read the book in order but now he had something specific to look for. The index revealed a quick mention of something called “Trotter Head.” Trotter Head, according to the book, was some kind of a thing that specialized in cattle mutilations. There was a specific charm that could keep it away from your herd if kept in the appropriate barn. Okay, he already knew that. What was the creature? What were its weaknesses? What did it actually want? Could it be reasoned with, made to go away? And if it specialized in cattle mutilations why did Mr. Schmidt specifically state that the thing needed to be kept from children and elders? There had to be more information somewhere. 

After dinner Dad dropped them back at the hotel and told them not to wait up. Sam hadn’t planned on it. Dean looked disappointed and glared at Sam as soon as the door was closed. “Great,” he whined. “Another Saturday night stuck indoors with my geek brother.”

Sam shrugged. He wouldn’t want to be stuck indoors with himself either, not if he was the golden child and had the option to go out on dates if he wanted. He took the slush fund money his brother passed him and added it to the stash along with his own. “What did you and he do all day?” he asked instead.

“We went looking for the thing doing the cattle mutilations, what do you think we did?” He flopped back on the bed, making Sam lose his place in his book. That was okay; the book had little remaining to offer on the subject of Trotter Head. “We found a mutilated corpse on what looked like an abandoned farm near the county line. Man, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what got the thing. It almost looked like the body exploded, leaving just the head and feet and a lot of guts.”

“Sounds gross.” He shrugged. He was nine. Gross was relative. “Did you get any pictures?”

“Of course! Polaroid is the best invention ever.” He grabbed the pictures out of the file on Dad’s bed.

Sam took them. Dean had been fairly accurate in his description of the corpse. “How long was this out there, two or three days?” 

“Pretty good there, Sammy. You can tell that from a picture?” 

The praise brought a smile to his lips. “I bet it smelled great.”

“Your Amish buddies have anything to offer?”

“Maybe. Apparently whenever ‘something bad’ happens in a community it gets attributed to something called Trotter Head. They’re concerned to keep their herds safe, and there’s a charm that they write out and hang up in the barns to keep Trotter Head away. I mean, it fits, right? The mutilations started and they affected everyone for like a week. Then the Amish put up these charms and they weren’t bothered.” 

His brother thought about it. “Maybe. So what is it? Spirit? Demon? Witch?”

“I can’t quite tell yet. There isn’t a lot of information in the grade school library on cattle mutilations.” 

“What are our tax dollars going for, Sammy?”

“We don’t pay taxes, Dean. We haven’t paid taxes since I was six months old.”

“Valid. You still have your scared-little-Sammy face on.”

He did not have a scared-little-Sammy face on. “Well… I mean, so far it’s only been cattle mutilations, right? I mean, it’s bad. I know. People make their livelihoods off these cattle and everything, and I guess someone could slip in some guts and crack their head on a rock and die or something –“

“You’re just the little optimist, aren’t you?”

“Shut up. Mr. Schmidt said specifically that the charm was to keep Trotter Head away from children and old people too. Look, can you figure out a way to get some of this information to Dad? I think this is what we’re looking at. I mean, I’ll keep digging, but I don’t think that this is something we should ignore.” 

He sighed. “You can talk to him yourself, Sammy. He’s our dad, not an ogre.”

“Are ogres real too?”

“I don’t know. Dad’s never seen one. Come on. This place gets free HBO. Let’s watch a movie.”

Sam made no objections, but he kept his books open and made sure to take careful notes.


	4. Chapter 4

Their father came home the next morning sometime around nine, still wearing the same clothes he’d left in the night before. Sam reveled in the ability to sleep in a little. They ran – always running, there could never be enough running – and they sparred. Sam did okay when it came to the sparring, taking Dean down about forty percent of the time. He was pretty sure his brother was letting him win most of those but whatever. Once or twice he said, “Hey, good shot Sammy!” in a tone that sounded like he actually meant it so maybe he actually managed to land a couple for real. Their father never really seemed to notice, and it wasn’t like Sam was going to get any shots in on him. 

After sparring came brunch, at the buffet place of course. The boy had to admit that he harbored deep thoughts about burning the place down. He didn’t even eat anything this time, just poked at the stuff on his plate if his father happened to glance his way. “Eat your food, Sammy,” John growled when he noticed. “I didn’t pay for a plate for you to not eat. There’s no place in this army for runts and weaklings.”

Back at the motel his father set him down to more Latin – “Just because you’re working on that farm, boy, doesn’t mean you get to let your real work slide. This job is the only one that matters.” Dean cleared his throat. “Uh, sir? Sammy had some thoughts on the cattle mutilations, sir.”

The old man sneered, although he covered it up quickly. “Did he now? Little Sammy, who can’t be bothered to even show up to target practice, thinks he’s qualified to have theories about hunting now?”

Dean swallowed and glanced at Sam. The boy’s palms broke out in a horrible sweat as his heart leaped into his throat. “No, sir,” he whispered.

“Are you calling your brother a liar, boy?”

“No sir.” “

Then what made him think that you had some idea about this hunt that I wouldn’t have already had? Something that I wouldn’t have already thought of? It isn’t as though I’ve been doing this job since you were six months old, when you can’t be bothered to do it at all.” He’d moved right into Sam’s space now, looming over him and blocking the light.

“I saw something in a book –“

“In a book. In a book from where?”

“The school library –“ “You think that a children’s book is going to have more information than a professional hunter can find out from the actual community? How did I raise such an arrogant son at only nine years old?”

“Dad, listen –“ Dean tried, but John held up a hand. 

“Dean, no. Don’t go trying to bail him out. Soldiers don’t go questioning their commanders. They shut up and do as they’re told. Today Sammy’s going to clean and maintain all of the weapons, and he’s not going to say a goddamn word until they’re done. Then he’s going to do twice as many Latin translations as he’d normally do, and he’s going to translate them back into Latin when he’s done. You’re not here to think, Sammy. You’re here to fight, do you understand me?”

“Yes sir,” he whispered. He’d more or less known that would be how it would go, but that didn’t stop the stinging in his eyes. 

Dad took Dean out for the rest of the day while Sam was left to his task, which was something of a blessing. It didn’t mean Sam could slack off at all, not even a little bit. He knew his work would be inspected minutely when they returned, along with the salt lines just to determine whether or not he’d left the room. He had no intention of doing either. He could work faster and better if there was no one around to bother him, so he actually managed to get through the guns in record time. He was actually pretty good at dealing with the guns – he had an eye for minutia and his hands were tiny enough to make quick work of even the smallest pieces of machinery. The knives were next of course, and he got them sharp enough to shave with and clean. His father had this idea stuck in his head that translating those Latin inscriptions was hard or something but he managed to get everything done before seven, done and packed away. He even got an hour’s worth of reading done before the older males returned, although he took care to hide the books in a workbook for school.

Dad had calmed down a shade while they were gone. He checked his youngest son’s work and found no fault in it, permitting him to eat the burger and fries they’d brought him home from some drive through. That had probably been Dean’s doing. John would probably not have thought to get him dinner at all. Sam ate what he could of it as his companions put the football game on and grabbed beers. He was permitted to wash up and read himself to sleep.

The next week started out more or less the same as the first. School wasn’t a challenge. Even bullies weren’t really a problem, since the Amish kids stuck together and they let him hang around with them. He’d hardly noticed that he understood more Pennsylvania German with each day, but then he had always been pretty good with language. On Monday George slipped him a book, an English book. “My father sent this,” he told him quietly. “You were curious about Trotter Head, so he thought you might be interested.” 

The book was old, and definitely not a children’s book. It was called “Folkways of Lancaster County” and its pages were yellowed, but not terribly worn. “I – well, of course I am,” he said. “I don’t want to be making off with your father’s stuff though.” 

The taller boy laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, Sam. None of us really want to read it anyway – we’ll learn it when we need to know it.” It was definitely something he’d have to hide behind a workbook or something so his father didn’t see, but he was going to read it. His father’s anger about the research just meant that he’d have to find another way to get the information to him, and if his brother wouldn’t help him he knew who would. He just needed to nail down a few more details first. 

The first non-bovine death came on Wednesday evening, and none of the Winchesters heard about it until Thursday morning. Riley Jennings had been a second grader, a year behind Sam. She’d been found out by the cattle shed when her parents went to rouse her for school Thursday morning. Sam and Dean saw the police cars and ambulances outside her house as the school bus passed it, but they didn’t know what happened until about ten o’clock when the entire school was called into an assembly and Riley’s death was announced. Grief counselors would be made available, the principal told them, and so on and so forth.

After school Sam went to work as usual, although the work was carried on with a more somber air than usual. The boy couldn’t help but think back to the information he’d gotten from the book Mr. Schmidt had lent him. He hadn’t gotten terribly far in it thanks to paternal scrutiny, but what he had learned had confirmed that Trotter Head always involved an escalation pattern. Cattle mutilations were just the start of the cycle, advancing to children and the elderly. Schmidt didn’t talk much that night, but he insisted on seeing Sam directly to the Ms. Weir’s car. Ms. Weir herself was a little uncomfortable. “I know you didn’t know Riley,” she began, “but I’m sure it must be scary for you, Sam.” 

He didn’t think telling her that death was pretty much par for the course was exactly the best plan. “Of course, ma’am. I mean, she was only seven, right?”

“Exactly. Only seven. I’ve had all three of her older siblings in my class; I know the Jennings well.” She grabbed a Kleenex from the box between them. “I can’t imagine what they must be going through.” She dabbed at her eyes, stuffed the used tissue in the pocket of her coat. “It’s scary.”

“They never said what happened,” he hazarded after a moment. “Was she sick?” 

She glanced at him. Had he overstepped? “It’s… just be sure that the doors and windows in that motel room are locked, Sam. The… I’ll be much more comfortable when your father moves you to a safer home.” She sniffed loudly. “And so close to Christmas, too.”

Right. So the death had been violent. And he’d completely forgotten about Christmas, not that he expected that they’d do much for it. “Those poor people,” he said as they pulled into the motel. The teacher insisted on pulling right up to the door and watching as he walked into the room before leaving. 

His father and brother were waiting. “How was school?” he asked Dean, carefully taking off his boots.

“It was school. Miranda’s parents are making her go to spend Christmas in Harrisburg with her aunt.” He rolled his eyes. “How about you, runt? Wasn’t that Riley girl in your grade?” 

Ah. That was the reason for the scrutiny. “No, she was in second grade, Dean. I’m in third.” He went to wash up.

“Did you hear what happened to her?” their dad wanted to know. “They don’t exactly give those details out in elementary school, sir,” he reported.

“Don’t you back-talk me boy.”

“Sorry, sir. They didn’t give out any details but I heard it wasn’t an accident or a sickness. It was violent, sir.” In the semi-privacy of the thin-walled bathroom he rolled his eyes.

“The police report said there wasn’t any sign of forced entry,” Dean mused. Sam exited the room and grabbed his dinner. If he ever got to heaven – and that was a mighty big if, he knew – he was pretty sure that it would be filled with sandwiches just like this. “Jeez, Dad, this looks a lot like one of those cattle mutilations.” 

“It does. I don’t know if it’s the same thing or a copycat or what, but this is definitely concerning.” He rubbed at his face and pulled out a map of the county. “Let’s see if we can figure out anything from the locations of the strikes.” He pulled out colored pens and pulled out a black one. “That one is this little girl’s house. Here, Sam, make yourself useful. Go through all of these reports here and mark down the location of the sites where these phenomena have been happening over the past, say six weeks. Make it quick – people are dying.” 

He refrained from rolling his eyes. Of course people were dying. He grabbed the colored pen. He wouldn’t use black because black represented the death of a human. He chose red for the first wave of attacks, the first week when Amish and English families alike had been attacked. He used green for the next wave, the two weeks after that as the entity he was already thinking of as Trotter Head settled into a rhythm. Then he used blue for the next two weeks, and purple for the week after that. Once that was done he sat down with his notebook to make note of the number of mutilations in each attack. His father was elbows-deep in papers of some kind. His brother was doing homework. “Did you finish there, Sammy?” Dark eyes lifted from the papers.

“Yes, sir.” He handed his work over to the senior Winchester. 

“What’s all this?”

“Numbers by location and by week, sir. In case you found it useful, since you weren’t ready for the map yet.” 

He’d finished the first sandwich, but he didn’t want to start on the second until dismissed by John. “You thought I’d find it useful?” Dean, unseen by their parent, winced. 

“Maybe, sir. Since you weren’t ready for the map yet,” he repeated. “You know, so I could get to know how to look at a case like you do. From multiple angles.”

He snorted. “You’re never going to have to look at a case the way I do.” He took the numbers, though, and looked at them. “Interesting. It looks like the mutilations have gotten worse the closer the farms are to the old cemetery, but the Jennings’ house is about as far from that cemetery as you can get while staying in the thing’s apparent hunting grounds.”

“There’s an old battleground near the Jennings’ house,” Sam supplied. “We learned about it in school yesterday.” They hadn’t. He’d learned about it in one of the local folklore and history books he’d gotten from the library. His father didn’t need to hear about that, though. “I think there may be some remains on the site.” His father glowered, but nodded slowly. “Could be. I’ve never heard of a vengeful spirit that reached out like this, though. I need to think about this, make some phone calls tomorrow.” He took Sam’s work. “Eat your supper.” The boy escaped back to his own bed, where he sneaked some more reading in before showering and going to sleep. 

That night he dreamed about Riley Jennings, with her dark pigtails and bloodless-pale face. The fact that he’d never actually known her in life apparently made little difference to his subconscious. She approached him in her nightgown carrying three flaming roses. “Hello, Sam,” she greeted him. 

He looked around himself. The place was dark and damp, with a hot and humid and kind of sulfurous scent to it. “Riley, right?” 

She nodded. For a moment her eyes flashed yellow but they turned blue again in a moment. “You didn’t save me.”

Had she expected him to? She was a dream, not even the real Riley Jennings. Of course she’d expected him to. He’d read about dreams, how they were projections of the secret parts of your mind or something. “I’m sorry.” 

“I know. I know you wanted to save me, just like I know you want to save the others.” She smiled, and it wasn’t a pretty smile at all. Blood trickled at the corner of her mouth. “I made a bet, you know. If you can save them I can leave too.”

“Leave where?”

“Here, stupid.” She gestured. “It’s no place for a kid.” She held out the flowers. They were perfect roses, made from flame. “Take them. They’ll help guide your way. When they go out you’ll know you’ve lost.” 

His hand reached out and accepted the gift – or the mission, or the quest, or whatever. The stems felt cool in his palm but he could feel the flames searing in his brain, smell their sulfur as he woke with a stifled cry. “What’s wrong, Sam?” his brother asked groggily.

The light was still on as their father continued to review some papers. He checked the clock. One A. M. “Nightmare,” he muttered as Dad glowered. “’M sorry. Go back to sleep.” His brother kept a hand on his back as he fell back into slumber, and this time he didn’t dream at all. 

Friday was long and dull. The grief counselors insisted on coming to each class and talking about loss and death and everything, and some of the students actually went. Sam thought Ms. Weir would benefit more from them than any of his classmates, but of course they couldn’t leave the classroom unattended. He briefly toyed with the idea of going himself and talking to them, just telling the truth, but he figured that would not be conductive to getting them out of that motel. Instead he kept his head down and did his homework in class, then did some reading behind his school books. Getting through the day with that burning headache he’d experienced since having that dream was the real challenge. His mind wasn’t really telling him anything about the case, of course not. He was just a kid, whatever some succubus might have hinted to his father. Well, maybe. Maybe he’d noticed a pattern, just hadn’t really noticed that he’d noticed. Maybe that was why he’d had the dream. He’d read about that sort of thing before, even talked about it with Pastor Jim. Sometimes the brain processed things without knowing it, without understanding that it was doing so. That’s all dreams were, after all. 

Fortunately Dad was out again that night – working the case or drinking, neither boy knew. Either way he left his paperwork behind. Once his Latin translations were done Sam picked up the map and the math he’d done for his father and looked at them. It looked like Riley’s house was the closest to the old battleground. Her parents were farmers and they kept cattle, although they were English and therefore unprotected. (Sam hardly noticed how the differentiation had slipped into his head.) With the cattle mutilations the next wave had come in a fairly tight cone around that, so the next child murders should follow pattern… right? “Shouldn’t you let Dad figure that out, Sammy?” Dean asked him, worried. “He was pissed when he thought you were trying to show him up before.”

“Whose fault is that?” he shot back. The burning in his head increased. “Here, give me that pencil. On Sunday – or maybe on Saturday after your shift – you’re going to suggest that you go check out the places on this arc. Tell me what you see. I’m pretty sure this thing’s going to go after kids, but… maybe old people too? Something Mr. Schmidt said…” He grabbed two Tylenol from the medical kit and dry-swallowed them. “I want to get some sleep, okay?”

Work on Saturday was long but Sam didn’t care. He didn’t mind the work even though it was dirty and strenuous – it had a point, unlike all of the calisthenics his father put him through, and he actually liked the cows. It was quiet, too. Mr. Schmidt told him not to come in on Tuesday as it was Christmas, but Thursday was still happening. That was good – he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about spending so much time trapped with his father and brother. 

Somehow his brother managed to talk their father into following his plan of checking out the arc of farms around the Jennings’ home. Sam hadn’t been around for that discussion, but he suspected that he’d presented it as being his idea and left Sam completely out of it. That irritated him to some extent – after all, it had been his idea, his inspiration and his work. Why should Dean get the credit? At the same time he knew better than to expect anything else from John Winchester and now Dean did too. At least his brother had seen John’s little freak-out and was willing to play ball now.

After their morning workout he packed himself into the Impala with his cleverly-disguised book and a notebook and went along for the ride. The problem of course was that there was very little to differentiate any of the farms from one another. They were large. They had homes on them. Out of maybe twelve farms on that arc maybe five had obvious signs of young children living there – plastic toys in the yard or actual children playing outside under the watchful eye of their parents, that sort of thing. Three looked like they might contain old people, based on things like wheelchair ramps or Buicks. Their father also invested in a police-band radio, which he set up as soon as they got back to the motel. Merry Christmas to him, Sam thought as he immersed himself in his book again and the football and beer took his older relatives. 

The next day was Christmas Eve, not that it mattered in the Winchester household. The only difference it made to anyone was that school was out, allowing more time for hunting and for training. There was sparring – enough sparring to leave Sam with a bruise he was pretty sure went to the bone – and knife training that might or might not have left similar bruises on his ribs. This time though he was pretty sure he gave his father at least as good as he got, and he knew Dad wasn’t letting him win. The old man would never say anything of course, nothing like “Good job, Sammy,” but he did call off physical training for the rest of the day and take a lot of ibuprofen when they got back to the motel. If he had to fight, Sam liked knives.

Dean spent some time on the phone calling girls – Sam let the babble wash over him so he wasn’t sure exactly which girls were which, he was pretty sure Miranda was one of them but there was more than just one. The conversations seemed pretty dull to the boy. Dean’s whole voice seemed to change. It got softer, gentler. He used the word “baby” a lot, and Sam was pretty sure that didn’t mean what he thought it meant. At least he hoped it didn’t. He was way too young to be an uncle. He focused instead on Trotter Head, or what characteristics he could find. There wasn’t a lot that he COULD find, and what he could find was scattered over multiple sources, so he kept a list and hoped his dad didn’t find out.

Their father kept the police radio on all night, which was actually better than television. Sam had known for a while that his family was emphatically not normal. “Screwed to all hell,” was how his eloquent older brother usually put it, and it was an apt description in more ways than one. He also knew that his father’s version of parenting was pretty damn screwy. Listening to the police band on Christmas Even reminded him of several facts:

1) Even normal people had their off days, and apparently Christmas brought the “off” out in people.

2) Being a family of ghost hunters did not give the Winchesters an exclusive on the crazy, not by any stretch of the imagination.

3) He and Dean needed to try harder to make sure that they stayed in motels closer to bars, because accidents involving alcohol sounded messy.

4) His father might not be much of a father but at least he’d never actively tried to kill him or his brother. 

The number of wrecks – and wrecking was easy to do on the hills around here, with the twisting roads – was astounding. And apparently people got into fistfights a lot around the holidays. Sitting around and listening to the calls coming in provided endless entertainment to the Winchesters. Even Dad got a good laugh about the family that had gotten fed up with Uncle Johnny and tied him to a tree in the front yard until the gathering was over. Neighbors had called police in, finding a man on the far side of middle age drunk, shouting and bound to a catalpa tree to be out of keeping with the Christmas spirit. Police responded. After two minutes with Uncle Johnny they relocated him to the back yard and a sturdier tree. 

Sam drifted off to the sound of static and almost rhythmic sounds of people repeating the word “Dispatch.” Christmas had never been a big holiday with the Winchesters, not during his lifetime anyway, and ever since he’d found out the truth from his father’s journal he had less use for Yuletide cheer. All in all, though it wasn’t the worst way to spend Christmas Eve. Or it wouldn’t have been, if a call hadn’t come in at about three regarding a cattle mutilation.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam woke up when his father left but he didn’t really bother to let him know. He’d be back when he was back. In the meantime he had Dean with him, and frankly a Christmas with just Dean was probably better for everyone. He felt a pang at the thought. It probably wasn’t much better for Dean, who worshipped their dad. He got back to sleep fairly easily and the brothers slept in until nine. When they got up they went for a run and did some calisthenics.

Their father still not being back from (presumably) poking dead cows with a stick, they exchanged presents. Sam gave Dean a new sheath for his favorite silver knife. He’d made it himself in secret, taking great care to hide the materials from both of his elders. Pastor Jim had taught him how, had praised the idea. Dean gave him a new pair of boots – not hand-me-downs, but new. They were a little bigger than he actually wore so he could grow into them, and so that he could wear them with multiple pairs of socks in case they went someplace really cold. “Thanks, Dean,” he breathed. “I love them.” His old boots had been hand-me-downs from Dean and it showed in the worn soles and the way the arches had evolved. These might be the very first brand-new shoes he’d ever owned.

“Be careful with them – you’ll need to break them in first or you’ll get bad blisters. Don’t think Dad’ll go easy on you if that happens, he doesn’t even know about these.” 

“I won’t tell, I promise.” He threw his arms around his brother and squeezed.

“Hey – no chick-flick moments. You are not an actual chick, however girly you may appear.” And that was their Christmas. 

Sam turned back to his study of Trotter Head. Some sources suggested that Trotter Head was a witch, but the boy dismissed that pretty quickly. This was something that the Amish were used to dealing with, and they were used to dealing with it on a cycle. If it were a witch whose work was limited to the community their charm wouldn’t have any effect on the entity, and furthermore a witch wouldn’t operate on a cycle like this. The Amish were practical. They wouldn’t make new signs in ink and paper, they’d paint the words right onto the walls. So – no witch.

That left demon, local curse, ghost or evil spirit. Ghost seemed iffy. He was no expert but he’d read his father’s journal (was in fact referring to it right now) and there wasn’t the kind of legend around any of the sites that would imply “ghost.” He asked Dean and Dean said that none of the English kids he’d been talking to had said anything either. So, demon, spirit or curse. A curse was going to be hard to break and the body count wasn’t high enough. He didn’t know a lot about local-area curses. From what he’d heard – again, not much and he’d had to sneak even that – they tended to involve sudden major catastrophes on huge cycles, not a few murders here and there. When he thought of local-area curses he thought of big-name school fires or the Boston Molasses Flood, and century type cycles instead of generational or so. Of course, he was nine. Maybe he was wrong. 

Demons he didn’t think were it either. Demons were rare. Demons were rare, and they left behind sulfur. That much he did know. (He’d dreamed about sulfur, or at least the stink of sulfur had been in his dream.) He didn’t think real demons could be kept away by a few words in an obscure dialect of German. His father’s journal had involved weird diagrams and designs when talking about demons, which his father didn’t even really believe in. So… probably not. It was something to keep in mind though.

That left evil spirits. They didn’t even have to be ghosts. Evil spirits featured in just about every pre-modern culture and even some that still existed. You could get water spirits and earth spirits, so why not a simple evil spirit? It didn’t have to have been human at any point. The problem was how to get rid of it. Spirits could usually be gotten rid of with iron. Many people used iron in their barns and hung horseshoes up to keep spirits at bay and whatnot, but he had no way of knowing if they had any effect on Trotter Head. What he did know was that the words denied the thing entrance. He also figured out that the thing definitely liked to escalate. For a while it would be content to mix cattle and human, but he guessed that by the middle of January it would be … feeding? Or whatever? – on humans exclusively. He couldn’t quite figure out exactly what it was doing, what it actually wanted. Was it intelligent? Did it have a will of its own or did it just go on instinct, following its urge to explode cattle and children and old people until its urges changed to slumber? Was it like Dean and his whole puberty thing? Was it building up so it could grow, spend an inordinate amount of time in the shower and make little Trotter Heads? 

The thought of a nation of little Deans running around scared him almost as much as the sulfurous place in his dreams. 

Their father made it home around three in the afternoon laden with Chinese food and liquor. Sam subtly nudged his brother. “What did you find at the crime scene, Dad?” the older boy asked, helping to unpack their Christmas feast.

“About what I expected to find, really. The cows exploded. Three of them. They’d been locked into the barn for the night but they got brought outside and exploded.” He looked haggard. “There were no drag marks, no footprints. Just a little disturbance in the snow.” He tossed a Polaroid at Dean, who made a show of looking at it and passed it to Sam. “The barking of the family’s dog woke them up. Farmer went to check and that’s what he found.” He passed more pictures to his golden child, who passed them along. “What did you boys do all day?”

“We worked out like you’d have wanted, sir. We did homework. Except for our morning run we haven’t left the room.” He passed Sam a carton of fried rice. At least it had peas in it, and no apparent relationship with cheese sauce. “We’ve had the police band on, but there’s been nothing relevant coming through. Just more drunk drivers and domestic disputes, sir.”

John considered. “Could be possessions.”

“The cops made them sound like repeat offenders, sir.”

“Mmm.” He almost sounded disappointed, but he took his shoes off and got in the shower. That meant they were in for the day.

Overnight Sam woke from a nightmare – a nightmare of fire, fire surrounding every part of him with the choking smell of sulfur and the voice of a strange little girl saying, “You couldn’t do it, could you?” – with a blinding, burning headache. The headache was so bad that he had to race to the bathroom, and a good half of his meal came back to visit.

“What’s wrong?” his father slurred, staggering over from his bed. 

“I’m fine,” he gasped, wiping his mouth and resting his head on the porcelain. “It’s just a migraine. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine if you’re barfing up all the food I just paid for, boy.” Tonight was a rum night. Sam supposed rum was not inappropriate for the holidays. “We need to get you tougher. Can’t have you tossing your cookies because of a migraine on a hunt now can we?”

“You could always leave me behind,” he suggested as his stomach gurgled.

“If you can’t have our backs what good are you?” 

Dean had woken up by now. “He’s just got a migraine, Dad. He gets them sometimes when he has bad dreams.” He shouldered his way into the bathroom and gently rubbed Sam’s back with his hand. “It’s okay, Sammy. Let it go.” 

“Ain’t raising no sissies,” John muttered as he staggered back to bed. 

“You’re okay, Sammy,” Dean soothed. “You’re okay.” It occurred to the boy that nothing about this situation was okay, but he kept his mouth shut. Eventually he felt well enough or at least empty enough to make his way back to bed, and he wasn’t ashamed to let Dean hold him and lull him back to sleep. Maybe he was too old for that, but if it helped then it helped. He almost didn’t notice that the three points of pain in his head had dwindled to two. 

Their father got them up at seven for their morning workout, and Sam realized pretty quickly that he was not going to be gentle because Sam had gotten ill in the night. No, there was extra running, and there was climbing too. “You never know when the safest place to be is up a tree, Sammy.” There was sparring and there was knife fighting. There was shooting practice. There were calisthenics and strength training. They got back to the hotel just in time for Dean to get cleaned up for work. Sam was driven to the nearest laundromat along with their laundry and his bookbag and an injunction to have ten incantations translated by the time the laundry was done. All that was easily accomplished, and Sam could turn his attention back Trotter Head. Not that there was much left to find out from the sources available to him at the time. He could figure out that the enemy was somehow tied to the area. He was going to guess that consecrated iron rounds would help, mostly based on the idea that the thing was a powerful spirit and iron worked on spirits. Scour as he might he couldn’t find anything else in the literature in his increasingly-heavy backpack that might educate him on the nature of Trotter Head. 

He did manage to learn more about the area, though. The Amish were a peaceful people, having come over as part of the great Palatine migration of the 1690s. Not everything about that era was particularly placid, though. The site of the battleground maybe had created enough psychic energy, enough anguish, to let the thing come through when it needed to. It hadn’t been the kind of battle to make it into national history books, just a skirmish between new arrivals and more settled settlers who didn’t welcome the often filthy and starving new arrivals. Atrocities had been committed on both sides and for a hundred years people plowing up new fields would occasionally turn up a new body. As if that hadn’t been enough, some eighty years later the ground had been fought over again. This time it was revolution, and the British had been chasing rebels across Pennsylvania as fast as their legs could carry them. A small unit of redcoats had caught up to a small unit of rebels right on that same ground and there had been no careful, measured lines of battle like military historians liked to describe. The Americans were fighting for their lives, they knew the area and they resorted to guerilla tactics. Against all odds, some of them had escaped with their lives and the wounded and dead from both sides had been left where they lay. 

The laundry was washed, and then it was dried, and then it was folded and still Sam waited. He helped an old lady with her laundry while he waited, for which she seemed grateful. He didn’t still want to be using seedy laundromats when he was eighty-nine. He wanted a real house, with his own washer and dryer. He knew people had those, he saw them on television and he saw them advertised. Even the Schmidts did their laundry at home. He’d be content if he had to do his laundry by hand and dry it on a line, as long as he didn’t have to guard the goods from hobos.

The time came and went when Dean would have gotten off work, and still Sam waited. One of the washers broke down and Sam learned how to help fix it. That killed a good two hours. By eleven thirty the attendant came over to him apologetically. “Look, kid, I’m really sorry but the place is closing in half an hour. Shouldn’t someone have come to pick you up by now?”

Someone should have picked him up about five hours ago, he thought, but he didn’t say anything. “Yeah, can I borrow your phone?” He called the hotel room. Dean picked up immediately. “Dean? Where’s Dad?”

“He’s working, Sammy. There was another body.” Sam sighed.

“Well, the laundromat is going to close, and it’s not like I can carry all this laundry home.” He knew he sounded whiny, but he didn’t care. There was too much of the stuff for him to physically lift. It wasn’t the weight it was the bulk. Well, the weight was a little much for him in one go too.

“Can’t you steal a car or something?” 

“I’m nine, dude, and no.” Actually he was pretty well able to steal a car but the circumstances weren’t exactly ideal, and he couldn’t really say that in front of the attendant. 

“We’ve got to work on that. Do you have the slush fund we’ve been building up?”

“Yeah.” 

“Get a cab. I’d be surprised if we saw Dad at all tonight.” 

He hung up the phone. “Can you think of a safe cab company? My dad’s been held up at work.”

The guy shook his head in sympathy. “That’s a bummer, man. Sure, I’ll call my cousin. It’ll be a nice break from ferrying drunks around.” He hated spending their scraped-together funds on a cab but that was what they’d established the reserve for after all. At least he should still have some lo mein left from last night, if Dean hadn’t eaten it all. 

The cab ride wasn’t bad although the cabbie looked a little askance at the seedy motel. He helped with the laundry, though, so that made it okay. The brothers put away their laundry before Sam ate his room-temperature lo mein. “What happened?” he asked around a mouth full of noodles.

“Old man, same as the others. He stopped in to tell me on his way to the crime scene.” He shrugged and handed Sam the reserve share of his earnings. “It’s definitely this thing, whatever it is that’s going after the cattle and crap. Dad’s getting really worried.”

“Him and me both.”

“Aw, c’mon, Sammy. You don’t care. You hate hunting.”

“Yeah. I do. I’d rather that we were holed up somewhere a million miles from here, someplace safe that had a washer and dryer and where we went to the same school for a whole year at a time. I hate this. But we are here, and I hate the fact that there’s something out there killing old people and kids and that Dad will do anything at all to stop it.”

“Someone has to.” 

“Even if it means sacrificing one of us?”

“Sammy, Dad would never do that. He loves us. You know that. He’s killed for us. He’s killed for you.” Dean backed away from him.

“You really think he wouldn’t use one of us as bait?” Dean turned pale and something clicked in Sam’s mind. Dad had used one of them as bait at some point. He didn’t remember it but Dean did. He changed the subject. His brother was clearly worked up about it already. “Anyway, so, yeah. We have clean clothes now. I think what we have is a local malevolent spirit.” He showed Dean his notes and his work. “I don’t know how you can explain it to Dad, but…”

“I really wish you’d try to tell him yourself, Sam. Maybe if he saw how hard you’re working you and him wouldn’t butt heads so much.”

“You saw how well that worked last time, Dean. I don’t need his praise, I need for the killings to stop, all right? That’s what the dream was about. When this thing stops I stop having the nightmares.” 

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. So here. Take a look at these, read through them and see if we can figure out how to get this stuff from here into Dad’s head.”

Dean asked questions, a lot of them. Sam answered them as best he could around his food. It was his first meal of the day, Dad apparently deciding that if his stomach had rejected yesterday’s meal it didn’t need one today. After they ate he had a wash and they went to bed. The next day their father still hadn’t put in an appearance. They went about their usual morning routine and in fact Sam had begun to despair of actually seeing their father until eleven – enough time to get him to the Schmidts’ farm. The idea that Sam might not have found a way home from the laundromat apparently hadn’t occurred to him.

Work was nice. He felt freer there somehow, even though he worked harder in some ways and had to watch his words more. During the break Mr. Schmidt gave him a smile. “You seem to like farm work, Samuel.”

“I do, sir. It’s not something I thought I’d ever do, but I honestly have been enjoying it. Thank you for the opportunity.”

“Do you think you’ll want to go into farming someday?”

“My father would never let that happen, sir. I have to go into the family business.”

“Are you interested in the family business?”

“Not at all, sir.” 

“When they’re old enough, all of our children go through a period called rumspringa. It’s a time when they go out into the world and see what the outside world, the English world, is like. They make the choice to come back or not, and most of them chose to come home. Maybe your family business needs a rumspringa.”

He sighed. “My dad isn’t big on choice, sir. But he’s my father.” They got back to work. 

After work his father picked him up but his mind was barely there. There was no conversation and that suited Sam just fine. He got cleaned up - showering before he ate this time – and by the time he got out his father was gone again. “He grabbed a few hours’ sleep while you were gone,” Dean explained around a forkful of pie. “He’s out working the case, no booze.” 

Sam shrugged. “Whatever.” He ate his sandwich. His pajamas looked a little shorter on him, or maybe it was his imagination. “What did he tell you about the case? Was it one of the houses we scouted?”

“Oh yeah. Wheelchair ramp, boat of a Buick out front. He died just like the others. There was that same disruption in the snow. Is your friend’s mom hot? She makes the best pies.”

“She’s my friend’s mom, Dean. Eeuw. Did you bring up any of the suggestions that I told you about?” 

“Oh. Yeah. I let him think through all the ideas himself. Like, I suggested them, right? And then I let him think of the reasons they wouldn’t work, just like you did. Sometimes I pointed things out if he didn’t get them, you know, if they were on your list. He finally came to the same conclusion you did – local evil spirit. See how I did that? I led him to it, but he thinks he came to his own conclusions. That’s how you have to deal with Dad, Sammy.”

It made sense. Of course, Sam hadn’t had the chance to actually do that. Dean had blown any opportunity to do that right out of the water. “Sure, Dean. I’ll remember that.” They finished eating and went to sleep.

Friday was more of the same. Sam didn’t mind training so much when it was just with Dean. He still didn’t think other kids had to run quite so much and the sparring really seemed a little much to him but at least with Dean it was reasonable. Dean told him if he got something right. Their father came home around noon, exhausted and covered in snow, mud and cow manure. Sam was an expert in cow manure and he was pretty sure this was fresh. He glanced at his sons and headed straight for the bathroom, which was frankly a good place for him. After he had de-crapped himself he collapsed into bed and the boys were silent. Dean walked to work near three. Sam got the weapons from the car and cleaned and maintained them. Some of them had actually been used, particularly one of the handguns, one of the shotguns and one of the knives. What had his father encountered that had required him to use all three of those things?

Dean came home after seven carrying burgers for all. Sam would have preferred just about anything else but he didn’t complain. John woke up and noticed the weaponry. He didn’t say anything about it, though. “What did you find on the case, Dad?” Dean asked. 

“Mostly nothing, Dean,” the eldest Winchester spat in disgust. “I sat out in a cow field for a lot of the night. I did see a feral dog, a random ghost wandering around and a guy trying to steal my car. I dealt with all three.” Sam didn’t want to know what “dealing with” the dog or the car thief entailed. He burrowed into his book while his father opened a beer and ate his burger. “So what did you two do today? Did you get your training done like you’re supposed to? There’s no room for slackers here, boys.” He fixed Sam with a stern look.

“Yes, sir,” the elder reported. “Everything just as you would want it.”

“Good man, Dean.” He sighed. “We need to figure out what exactly this thing wants and why, so we can get it to a position where it can be caught.”

“By caught you mean killed,” Sam clarified without thinking.

“Well yes, Sammy, killed. What did you think we were going to do with it, put it on a leash and feed it from a little bowl?” his father snapped.

“Sammy always has wanted a dog,” Dean smirked. 

“We know that it wants cows, children and old people,” the adult continued. “What do the three have in common?” 

“They can’t get away, or they can’t get away as easily,” Dean identified. “Old folks usually can’t move as fast or have like a mobility limitation or whatever. Young kids are trapped by their families – even if they wanted to get away they can’t. And cattle are, well, cattle. They’re in a herd. They won’t even try to get away, will they, Sammy?” 

“So it’s going after the vulnerable,” John nodded, stroking his chin. “There’s definitely a cattle connection, too. The two human victims have been killed near the cattle barns, even though that’s not where they were late at night.” His eyes narrowed. “If we were to put something it wanted near a cattle barn…” 

“No.” In books the protagonist always seemed surprised to hear his own voice speaking but right now Sam knew it was him, knew his own voice and darn well intended to speak. He meant what he was saying, too.

“No one’s saying it should be you, Sammy,” Dean assured him, patting him on the back.

“Actually….” Their father objected.

“Absolutely not. I will not be your bait, do you understand me?”

“I am your father and you will do as I tell you,” the old man informed him, getting to his feet. “This is necessary, Sam. Dean is too old, I’m too young. You’re the only one who fits.”

“I’m the most expendable,” he scoffed. “I’m not doing it.” 

“People are dying, Sam!” 

“And you’re eager to make me one of them!” He was ready for the blow this time. He knew it would be better if he just took it but this time he blocked.

“You know damn well how much I do to keep you safe,” his father roared. 

“That’s crap. You’re doing it for revenge. It’s nothing to do with me, or you wouldn’t be so keen to stick me out in the snow and hope some evil spirit decides to make my torso explode!” 

This time the blow came in even harder, knocking his head into the dresser. He lay there for a moment, dazed, and his father threw his (old) boots at him. “Get ready,” he spat. “We’re going out. You’ll play your part whether you like it or not. Don’t ever think of back-talking me again, boy.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: The blessing comes from this website:  
> http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/english3/p02604.htm
> 
> I used Google Translate to translate it into Latin. I make no claims as to the quality of the translation or the efficacy of the blessing.

Sam was hauled to his feet and roughly shoved toward the door. Dean scurried to get his boots and coat even as he got his own gear ready. “I’m not going anywhere!” the boy yelled, struggling (ineffectually) against his father’s iron grip. “I’m not going!”

“You’re going, and if you don’t stop screaming about it I’ll gag you,” John insisted. “Do you want social services called in, separating you and Dean?” Sam didn’t want that, not at all. “Then you’ll shut up and do exactly as you’re told. God, why do you have to fight every little thing?” He opened the door and shoved the barefoot boy out into the cold.

Apparently he was judged to be too much of a flight risk to even buckle himself into the back seat, because his brother came around to the back to shove his boots onto him like a baby while his father tied his hands together at the wrists. “What the hell, Dad?” Dean asked, stepping back.

“The boy won’t stop fighting, Dean. I can’t trust him not to try to get attention or disrupt this until we get to the site. He’s too selfish to cooperate so we have to do this the hard way.” He turned a hard eye onto Sam. “Don’t even think about trying to lift those hands to the window, boy. This is important.” He felt the tears streaming down his cheeks and was powerless to stop them. His father had bound his hands and was about to set him out as a sacrifice for some evil spirit in the hopes that the might – maybe – be able to catch the thing. And Dean was doing nothing to stop him. So much for his vaunted protectiveness. He’d read the journal, he knew all about the idea that something demonic was after him and blah blah blah – but here his father was just setting him out on a plate. Maybe he’d just gotten sick of his smaller, slower son, the excess luggage? He could try talking to him but what was the use – his father wouldn’t listen, he never did, and even if he did his father was the one person in the entire universe who was immune to reason and logic. He might as well try to reason with a cow. The only thing he could possibly salvage was to not let his father actually hear him cry. He’d already seen the tears, but he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of hearing his terror. So even though his heart thundered in his chest he fought to make his breathing sound vaguely normal. 

The rope itched against his wrists and he got out of it pretty quickly. He thought about putting his coat on properly but that would attract too much of his father’s attention; hopefully by the time they got to the site he’d have forgotten he’d tied Sam up. Dean sat rigidly in the passenger seat. He wasn’t any more comfortable with this than Sam was. He didn’t say anything but Sam could see it in the set of his shoulders, the stiffness of his neck. Well, okay. At least he was a little uncomfortable with it. Then again, maybe the part he was uncomfortable with was the little brother who was unwilling to sacrifice himself for the hunt. 

And there was no part of Sam that was willing to sacrifice himself for this. Did he want innocent children and old people to die? No, of course not. Did he want cattle to suffer? No. Neither did he want himself to suffer. His father didn’t even know for sure what this thing was. He’d resisted any and all attempts by Sam to share information – not that the boy thought that he necessarily had all the information himself but his were the best leads they had, and those leads were all, well, passive. They didn’t involve any details on how to kill the thing. Maybe consecrated iron rounds wouldn’t take it out. Maybe it needed something obscure, something they wouldn’t have on hand. Something like a chainsaw coated in the blood of a sow or something. He was going to die. Tonight. And his own father was going to set him out and watch it happen.

Maybe it was selfish of him to not be a willing participant in this. After all, he’d gotten Mom killed. He wasn’t entirely sure how a six-month-old could get his mother killed but it was definitely his fault. It had happened in his room, of course. And according to Dad’s journal there were certainly things after him specifically. Maybe he should be more willing to give his life – after all, how many people had already been hurt or worse because of him? But for crying out loud, he was nine! Why him? Why any nine-year-old? Why was a nine-year-old expected to willingly put his head on the block?

He forced his breathing back into regularity. There was nothing he could really do about this now. He tried to remember some of the prayers he’d learned at Pastor Jim’s place. “God, if you’re listening,” he prayed silently, “whatever it is that I did, I’m sorry. Please keep Dean safe, and the Schmidts. Amen.” 

Their target was a large-scale farm and the Impala was able to drive off onto a side road away from the main house. No one would see anything. No one would hear anything, either. Sam could scream as loud as he wanted and no one would ever know he was there. Well, that was comforting. The car stopped and pulled over beside the barn. “All right. Are you going to stay put or do I have to tie you down?” his father demanded. 

Sam looked around. “I don’t think I could make it to the farm house before you tackled me,” he admitted.

His father looked at him in disgust. “You have no faith in me.”

“You’re not the one being set out like a sacrificial lamb by his own father.”

“Sam, don’t,” his brother counseled, coming between the pair. “Just don’t, you’ll only make it worse for yourself. Come on. Dad and I are going to be right where we can see you, we’re going to be watching you the whole time, and the minute we see anything shady we’ll come out guns blazing, okay? Nothing’s going to even get close to you while I’m around. You won’t feel a thing, I promise. It’s all going to be over before you know it.”

Sam did not believe his brother. He’d do what he could of course, but really, they had no idea what they were even up against. “You know what takes this thing out, do you?”

Dean looked away for a moment before giving him a cocky smile. “Dad knows everything, Sammy. I told you, we’ve got this.”

“Don’t coddle the boy, Dean. He’s got a job to do, he’d better do it.” He grabbed Sam’s arm and hauled him out of the car. 

The smell of agriculture was thick tonight, although the feed was different and so the smell was different from what he was used to. He found himself roughly guided to one spot in the middle of a clearing, probably a path between buildings. “You stay right there and don’t move from that spot.”

“Do you want me to stand or is it okay to sit down?” he asked, rolling his eyes. What did he care about manners? Where he was going they wouldn’t get him far. 

“Don’t be a wiseass, boy.” 

He sat down. It would be a little harder to tell if he pissed himself when he died. 

Of course, sitting in the snow behind the barn wasn’t exactly comfortable. The moon shone on him like a spotlight, and every little sound was like a gunshot to his ears. The lowing of a heifer in the barn set his pulse to double-time. The rustle of hay indoors indicated certain impending doom. He should really treasure each and every sound, terrifying as they all were. Each one might be his last. What would it be like? Would he just explode all at once – alive one second and dead the next? That would be okay, he supposed. He didn’t exactly relish the thought of dying but frankly the life he was living, the life ahead of him, wasn’t exactly much to fight for. Or would it be drawn out and painful? Would he burn? Would it be more like the freezing and shattering of something stuck in liquid nitrogen, like he’d seen in a video in science class once? That would probably hurt and be really unpleasant, but when considered with the objective scientific thought of a nine-year-old boy would be kind of awesome too. Would it be like steam building up as his blood boiled?

“You have no faith in me,” his father had said. Could the guy really be surprised? On what planet did a guy really expect his kid to be okay with sitting in the snow with two guns on him waiting to die? Seriously, did he have some kind of visions of Abraham and Isaac? No, that wouldn’t be John Winchester’s style, and since that story had nothing whatsoever to do with demons or ghosts or werewolves or whatever Sam strongly doubted it had gotten more than a cursory glance. And really, that whole story had been told from Abraham’s point of view anyway, how it was a test of Abraham’s faith. How had Isaac felt, getting bound to that stone and having his father standing over him with that knife or whatever? Had he just accepted things or had he tried to plead, or argue, or get away? And Isaac had enjoyed his father’s love and affection before that day. Sam was no fool. He’d read the journal. He knew better. Isaac was a twerp. If he met Isaac in the afterlife he would punch him in the nads and call him out for the sucker he was. 

The burning pain in his head flared up again and he massaged his own temples. There were only two points of agony this time, though. Psychosomatic, he told himself. It was all in his head, and then he laughed at himself in spite of his terror because he’d made a pun. Clearly he was losing his mind. Well, it wasn’t like he was going to have much use for it beyond tonight, because his father was getting him killed. 

The air shifted in front of him. It didn’t go opaque, it didn’t shimmer and it didn’t swirl. It just – shifted. It was almost like he was suddenly looking at the stars through a pane of glass, and the air in front of him got colder. “Hello, boy.” The voice was deep, flat. He knew that it was audible only to him. Even if his family had been able to hear it they wouldn’t have been able to understand it; the thing spoke Pennsylvania German. “What a kind thing your father has done. I’d planned to take the little boy in the third room in the farmhouse but you’ll do just fine. Of course, I might take him anyway. You aren’t much of a boy.”

“So they tell me.” His voice wouldn’t work – why was that? Still, he could hear the words in his head just as clearly as if he’d spoken them. He could equally sense the surprise on the creature’s part as it heard him. “Not much of anything, really.”

“I wouldn’t say that. How is it that you can speak to me, boy?” He felt icy fingers, or something like fingers anyway, on his chin lifting his face. “Tell me.”

“If I knew I might think about it.”

“But you might not. Stubborn. It would have been a good trait for one such as you. Ah well. As it is, your potential is wasted. I wonder if that father even realizes what he is throwing away.”

“He doesn’t care.” 

“No.” Sam was paralyzed but he found himself being hauled to his feet. “He calls me a monster.”

“You’re the one about to make me explode here.” He could already feel something starting, a kind of burning and a kind of pressure starting right around his solar plexus. “I gotta say, I’m not seeing where he’s terribly wrong here.”

“Oh, he’s not – not on that end. I was born of the strife on this land, the mindless slaughter of innocents. Not that you really count as an innocent, do you, boy? But neither does he. He kills without thought, without consideration. Without mercy. An innocent non-human is just as worthy of slaughter to him as something like me. And of course there’s you. Would he put that brother of yours out here, I wonder?”

The pressure increased, spreading into his lungs and into his belly. So did the burning. His mind flung out, grasping ant anything he could possibly think of. So much for his father, his brother. “Dad knows everything, Sammy,” Dean had told him. Either they knew and were choosing not to do anything about what was happening or they didn’t know what to do about it. On the one hand, he could easily believe that they just didn’t know what to do about it. He himself could barely see that there was anything amiss, and it was in front of him. Except, you know, that whole jerkily standing like he couldn’t move and was being manipulated by an outside force thing. There was that. So maybe the choosing not to do anything was the issue. He could believe that of his father. Maybe he was waiting to learn something. Maybe he was waiting to get a better view? Or maybe he was waiting for Sam to be out of the way once and for all. His mind flailed as his insides burned. All that Latin and for what? Maybe one of the stupid prayers or incantations he’d had to translate would have stayed in his stupid brain. The burning in head and torso actually served to focus more, or maybe it was the adrenaline and the certainty of impending death. He remembered one of the prayers that he’d done only that day, a blessing for the land. Maybe it wouldn’t be effective but at least he wouldn’t go down without a fight. “Domine Deus omnipotens,” he quoted, calling the image of the words before his eyes and focusing with all of his might. “Benedicat terra (vel domum istam).” 

He felt the creature’s consternation – something like this could never feel true fear. “What is it that you think you’re doing boy?” it snarled. “Do you really think that a handful of words in a dead language can actually do anything against something like me?” 

The pain increased in his torso. His breath felt like it was coming from behind a dishcloth. He wasn’t going to allow the monster to distract him with pain or trash-talking. “May sanitas, castitas, victoria peccati, virtus, humilitas, bonitas,” he continued. It wasn’t an exorcism, not even close, but whatever it was seemed to be having an effect on the creature. It might not be having much of an effect but he’d take what he could get.

“I am this land, boy,” it breathed icily in his ear, and he could hear the fluid in his lungs now. He had the sneaking suspicion that he knew what that fluid was but he couldn’t lose his focus. “You think you can get rid of me with a simple blessing? Especially when you can’t move to complete the ritual?”

“Et mansuetudinem hic florent. Ut plenitudinem legis observetur, gratias autem Deo Patre, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.” He was exhaling blood now and even though the air was frigid he was sweating. The air shimmered now. The stars behind the creature dimmed a little, as though the thing was becoming semi-opaque. “Et semper ita benedictus est super terram (vel domum istam) et in his ehabitant in ea: nunc et in saecula saeculorum.” Now the monster was completely solid. It had to be at least seven feet tall and completely black. The head was that of a horse but the teeth were all sharp and pointy; a flesh-eater. The body was skeletal with almost vapor-like material between the bones. He cried out as the burning in his body became unbearable. This was it. He was going to die.

A shot rang out. Dean came rushing out from wherever he’d been hiding, firing his handgun like this was a video game and he had the cheat codes to give him unlimited ammo. Dean, being Dean, didn’t miss. He caught Trotter Head in the face with every shot, even though the thing fell with the first blast. As soon as Sam could move again he uncapped his flask and splashed holy water on the ground, causing the monster to catch fire. Dean sprang backward, grabbing Sam under his shoulders. The boy cried out. The burning sensation was gone, and so was the pressure but the pain was still there and it was quite possibly the most intense pain that he could ever remember feeling. His breath still shot blood out with every exhalation. Every time he breathed agony shot through his entire body and he couldn’t get more than a shallow breath in no matter what he did.

His father walked up behind Dean, shotgun in hand. “Is it gone?” he asked. In response the teen indicated the flaming corpse. “Good work, Dean.”

“It was something Sammy did,” his brother informed, dropping to his knees to examine the injured third-grader. “Christ, Dad, he feels like he’s on fire.”

“Hey – you’re the one who shot the thing. If you hadn’t your brother would be puppy chow by now. He didn’t even fight.” He gave a contemptuous snort. “Get up, Sam.”

“Dad, he’s bleeding every time he breathes,” Dean objected. “I think he’s hurt.”

“He’ll be fine. Come on, let’s get back to the motel before someone comes looking for the source of the gunfire.” He nudged Sam with his toe. “Get up, Sam. There’s no time for lazy kids.”

If Sam could draw enough breath to scream he would have. As it was, he just whimpered. Darkness surged all around him. His last thoughts before it claimed him were that at least the monster was dead.

He didn’t stay unconscious for terribly long. He found himself rousing when he was buckled into the Impala, only to cough a stream of blood down his chin. “Damn it,” his father cursed, pulling the boy’s coat off and feeling his chest. “His ribs are broken.” He checked his abdomen. “I don’t like the feel of his guts, either.”

“He needs a goddamn hospital, Dad,” Dean demanded.

“Don’t you take that tone with me, boy,” the senior Winchester snapped. “This is an expense we didn’t need. It’s not like we have the cash.” Sam passed out again.

He woke up again when the brakes slammed outside an emergency room. “Listen, Sammy,” his brother said into his ear. “The story is that you were in a hit and run, got it?” He nodded once. His brother picked him up again and carried him bridal-style into the emergency room, followed by their father. “I need some help!” the brother cried, as Sam sank back into oblivion. 

The next time he woke up he was in a bed with several tubes sticking out of him. His brother sat by his side, pallor accentuated by dark circles. The bed was encircled by a curtain. He felt tired and fuzzy and distinctly stupid. “Do you know where you are?” Dean asked him. 

“Hospital,” he slurred.

“That’s right, kiddo. “You’ve been here for like three days.” 

He groaned. “Dad’s gonna be pissed.”

“Dad’s just happy you’re alive. You’re pretty sick. You’ve got a lot of broken ribs. Your lungs were punctured and at least one of them was collapsed. Some of your organs were damaged and you were bleeding internally. You lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood, Sammy.” He took Sam’s hand and squeezed it gently. “They gave you a blood transfusion but, uh, you didn’t like it. You had a really bad reaction to it. Turns out you’re staying for free, Sammy.” He gave a brittle smile. “What do you remember?”

“Dad leaving me out there as bait and waiting for me to die.”

His brother’s face fell for a moment. “That’s the drugs talking, Sammy. They’ve got you doped up on all the drugs they can give a kid your size. You’re going to be a hurting cookie for a while, you know.” He paused. “Do you remember it?”

“Trotter Head?” 

“Yeah?” 

He struggled. The whole incident was there in his mind, sharp and clear as everything else was fuzzy and incoherent. “Yeah. Hurt.” 

“How come you didn’t fight? I mean, you’ll fight Dad at the drop of a hat. How come you wouldn’t fight a monster?”

“Paralyzed. Couldn’t. Not with m’body.”

Dean frowned. “What do you mean, not with your body, dude? That’s what you have.”

He sighed. He had a tube in his nose. It was probably helping him breathe, but it itched. “Thing was big, jerk. ‘M not. The hell was I going to do to it anyway?”

“Did you do something… else?” Sam nodded. “C’mon, Sammy.” 

“Spoke to me.”

“The thing spoke to you? We never heard a thing.”

“In my head. Spoke in my head. German. Local German. I spoke back. I mean, why not, right? If I can hear it why can’t it hear me?”

“Uh, because you’re human?”

“Whatever. It heard me. It was… surprised.” He paused for breath. “Didn’t like that much. It… we talked a little and then he started killing me. Couldn’t move, only think. Remembered a blessing… blessing for land… from those Latin translations… Dad made me do. So I recited it at him… you know, the same way I talked at him. He got scared, and then he got solid.”

“That’s how I could see him!” Dean exulted. “I saw you standing up but I didn’t know where to aim, I didn’t know what was going on! Sammy, you did it! You made it so I could see him and shoot him!”

“Poured the holy water out to finish the ritual,” Sam finished. “He reminded me of it, actually. That’s when he burned. I guess that’s holy ground now.”

“Nice thinking, Sammy.” 

“Don’t tell Dad.”

“Sam, you did it!” his brother urged. “If it wasn’t for your quick thinking we’d never have been able to kill the spirit, and you consecrating the ground like that probably kept the thing from coming back ever. You’re the hero here.”

“Dad won’t see it that way, Dean. He’ll be mad about the whole… in the head thing.”

“Sammy, he should know about that. It might be something we can use –“

“Promise me, Dean!”

“Okay! Okay, Sam. I promise you.” He glanced at the monitors attached to Sam, which were showing a marked increase in heart rate. “I promise you I won’t say anything to Dad about it. Ever. Okay? Just… close your eyes and get some sleep. You need to rest so you can get better. We’re going to be moving on soon. Dad got word of a job in West Virginia.” Sam obediently closed his eyes. They wanted to close anyway and he had the comfort of his brother’s hand in his to help ease his way into a healing sleep. If he heard the sound of boots against linoleum outside the curtain he was far too loopy from the drugs to attribute any particular significance to them.


	7. Epilogue

The Winchesters left Lancaster County on January 4, exactly seven days after Sam’s very personal encounter with the spirit known as Trotter Head. He was wheeled from his room in the hospital, where the curtain around his bed had been drawn at all times to conceal the clown-centric décor that the pediatric ward seemed to feel essential to juvenile healing and well-being, and down to the Impala. Once he was buckled in they drove west and did not stop until the next “home,” a weekly rental in Martinsburg, West Virginia. 

Dean had been brought over to the Schmidts’ farm on Saturday to say goodbye, while Sam was still in surgery and he could do nothing but fret. They’d been devastated to learn of the hit and run. There had been dark mutterings in their German dialect between husband and wife and uncles. Dean might not have been able to understand the mutterings but he could understand the tone. He didn’t think that they were buying the “hit-and-run” story for a minute and in the absence of the truth he could guess at what they thought of Sam’s family. Maybe they weren’t leaving a moment too soon. These strangers sure seemed attached to his Sammy. That theory was borne out when he went back to school on Wednesday and was approached by Gertrude Schmidt, one of the girls in his class and apparently one of the family’s daughters. She had a small bundle tied up with cloth that she passed him. “My father asked that you pass this along to Samuel,” she informed him simply. “We’re sad we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.” 

Of course neither John nor Dean were about to let Sam receive gifts from anyone, no matter how safe they seemed, without checking them first. The package contained warm knit mittens and a hat in an unusual shade of yellow and a handful of books in German. None of them looked particularly dangerous and Geek Boy would probably love them, so they wrapped them back up again and Dean brought them to the hospital when he went to see his brother. The teen didn’t give much thought to the details Sam had given him about what had passed between him and the monster. He didn’t really understand them, and of course it made sense. If the monster could talk to him in his head why wouldn’t he be able to talk back? Sammy had begged him not to talk to Dad about it and it wasn’t like he’d been keeping secrets from Dad; he knew where Dad was, the guy had heard the whole thing. Dad didn’t talk to him about it either. He was more unsettled by the wall he felt between his hardheaded brother and his hardheaded father than by anything Geek Boy had done, well, that and the fact that Geek Boy wasn’t willing to let his father know that he’d done anything at all. 

On January 3 John went ahead and made his Lancaster County entry into his journal. He didn’t make note of the tension between himself and his son as it related to the case. He didn’t mention the battlefield, or the Amish connection. He didn’t mention much directly about the case at all. He certainly didn’t mention that the monster had been taken out without any involvement from him at all. All he did mention was the charm to ward against Trotter Head – gleaned in English translation, from the English-language book Mr. Schmidt had given to Sam. Well, that and an interesting poem he’d found. Whether he didn’t want to commemorate this particular battle because he hadn’t understood it or because the body count hadn’t been high enough or because he himself hadn’t gotten to be the hero even he couldn’t say. 

He had been just outside the curtain when Sam woke and spoke to Dean. He didn’t reveal himself. He hadn’t used his youngest son as bait simply as a trust exercise – of course not. He legitimately hadn’t seen another way to control the situation. Sammy’s lack of trust and faith in him had shocked him. It had infuriated him. A soldier had to trust his commander, had to trust him so implicitly that he would follow even the most apparently self-destructive orders without question. That was how wars were won. Dean got that. Dean had always gotten that. What the hell was wrong with Sam that he didn’t? It wasn’t that Sam was stupid, far from it. What was it about this concept that the boy just couldn’t grasp? He couldn’t face these thoughts, certainly not with the amount of booze flowing through his veins that night. (His drug of choice at the moment was vodka, it being on sale.) The motel room was certainly a lot more pleasant without those alien, hazel eyes looking silently at him or that tiny form trying to stay as far away as it could from its own father.

When had he started thinking of his son as “it?” It had to be the vodka talking. 

He didn’t even go into the room to fetch Sam, just signed for him and picked up his prescriptions. The kid would take most of them too, although whether or not he’d keep up with the pain pills remained to be seen. Hoarding the pain pills wasn’t the issue, not the way it was for pills prescribed to the older pair. Pills prescribed for a runt like Sam wouldn’t be effective relief for someone who weighed more than forty pounds. The kid himself didn’t like feeling drugged, though – it was like he didn’t want to be anything less than clear-headed around his family, which was probably more or less the case. 

The hospital had definitely been less than enthusiastic about his condition when he’d been brought in. He was too small, too thin. He tried to explain that the kid just wouldn’t eat but that didn’t seem to mollify them. Indeed, the doctor only seemed to purse her lips more. He designated Dean’s place as by his brother’s side until he left that place, if only to keep Social Services away. They didn’t know what was really going on. They didn’t know what he had to do. They didn’t know about Mary. Mary came first.

He didn’t actually see Sammy face-to-face until he was discharged. The boy didn’t even look at him. He kept his eyes straight ahead in his wheelchair, which Dean pushed. Dean helped him into the Impala’s backseat and buckled him in and then they were off. At first John thought his son had fallen asleep or passed out once they were on the road but a glance in the rearview showed those alien eyes were open, staring out the window. For a moment that bothered John. Sammy had once been a baby, as willing to take comfort from his father as from his mother or brother. Even as a toddler it hadn’t been that hard to get a smile or a giggle out of him, or at least some interest. Truth be told John didn’t try very hard to reach him. He’d passed that responsibility on to Dean the night that Mary burned, and now he had no idea what was going on in this nine-year-old’s head. What he did know – gleaned through eavesdropping alternated with explosive acts of rebellion – he couldn’t understand. Whatever was going on there he needed to break the boy of it, for everyone’s good. 

For his own part Sam bore with his hospital incarceration stoically. The drugs made it hard to think and that was probably for the best. Dean was with him most of the time. That was good. His father wasn’t with him at all. He should care, right? That his father had put him in the hospital and didn’t care enough to come see him? He didn’t though. Couldn’t. 

After a couple weeks he was deemed to be healthy enough to leave the hospital. He could tell that they weren’t happy about letting him go, but he didn’t require hospital care anymore so they couldn’t keep him. He still didn’t feel great but they gave very strict instructions to both his father and brother about making sure he got x amount of fluids, and didn’t do any running around or anything physical at all for another eight weeks because of the ribs. He didn’t expect to get all of that time off from training but whatever. No school for another week either.

Once they got to West Virginia he had plenty of time to question things, time and quiet. His brother was at school all day and his father was working, either out on a case or researching. He was either alone in the questionable rental or unwilling to leave the small bedroom he shared with his brother. Now he was able to stop taking the pain medicine – not because he wasn’t in pain anymore. Far from it. There was simply no way he was going to be alone with John Winchester at anything less than full mental capacity.

He wondered why his body had rejected the blood transfusion it obviously needed. That wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to be able to type blood pretty quickly and easily, right? They had tests and everything? And wasn’t there a type of blood that was a universal donor? Whatever – it had failed for him, spectacularly, and he’d nearly died from shock and anemia. He still had to take stupid huge iron supplements. What had gone wrong? And how had they stopped it? He thought he remembered doctors panicking, alarms going off… 

And then, in a moment of being left alone in an ICU… another doctor? With a shot? He hadn’t seen anything on his chart about another injection, and he’d looked during a moment of wakeful boredom.

And then there was the matter of Trotter Head itself. Himself. Whatever. Did malevolent spirits have a gender? That was another question for Pastor Jim, if and when they got back to see him. Why had the thing been so surprised that Sam could respond to him? He’d seemed to hint that there was something different about Sam, too. “One such as you.” “Your potential is wasted.” “And then there’s you.” “Not that you really count as an innocent, boy.” 

Had that thing really somehow sensed Sam’s inherent impurity, that uncleanliness that he could never scrub out or even explain?

When the drugs wound their way out of his system again he dreamed again. Once again he found himself in the strange, warm sulfurous place, with Riley Jenkins standing before him. The old man whose name he never knew stood beside her. “You managed it,” she told him. “Now we can leave. I didn’t think we would be able to.”

“I still don’t understand,” he told her. “You didn’t do anything. Why would you have been here in the first place?”

She gave him a sad smile and the old man took his hand. “It was always about you, Sam.”

He blinked, and the three roses she’d given him appeared in his hands. They no longer burned but appeared to be normal flowers again. “Here,” he said, handing them back. “I don’t need the extra motivation.”

“They’re yours, Sam,” she told him. “Yours to keep.” 

When he woke up he’d clenched his fists so hard his nails had cut into his palms, and Dean made him take the pain pills again.


End file.
